We Have Trespassed: Song of the Slim Girls, Starved

We have trespassed; we have dealt treacherously
with our desire, coercing a rebirth from bone;

we have acted perversely; we have done wrong
in our bodies, wishing them hollow as folly;

we have robbed; we have spoken slander
against the grown, women full of the mind;

we have been presumptuous; we have done violence
to ourselves, to our own candied forms;

we have practiced deceit; we have counseled evil
before mirrors, exhorting by example;

we have revolted; we have blasphemed
our wombs to slivers, no blood tricked from ivory;

we have spoken falsehood; we have scoffed
at the edible, animal that it is;

we have rebelled; we have committed iniquity
only in a doze, that nodding boy, who alone knows our skin;

we have been stiff-necked; we have acted wickedly
as sexless pixies, before their hair grows in;

we have transgressed; we have oppressed
appetite, our sentient caterwaul;

we have dealt corruptly; we have committed abomination
as old as the science that declared the earth round;

we have gone astray; we have led others astray —
off the world’s abdomen, as we found it, flat.

Susan Comminos poems have appeared in Tikkun, Midstream and Judaism, among others. She has also written articles for The New York Sun.