EDNOS

by Chris Butler

My stomach aches.

I’m so hungry
but I just ate.

A symphony within my belly
bellows a medley of melodic cacophony.

Breakfast consists of chirping
regurgitation of last night’s dinner,

unless I chew on alphabet cereal and bran
before bed to produce morning poetry.

Thunderous rumbles quake my
underworld core,
spreading dysentery out from
the sanitary sanctuary

of a constipated king upon
his bottomless throne,
crowning a fecal fetal heir,
to be regarded as a future
queen too clichéd
to eat cake.

Counting callous calories
by the ounce as if it counts.

Disgruntled digestion
of a bag of rubber bands
self-induces gastric bypasses.

Fifty-five years engulfed in
fits of hiccups, I watch my skin
slowly expose over two
hundred bones as skeleton chic.

Attempting to swallow saliva
and lubricate dry heaving spasms,
to prevent the chafing of my
sandpaper esophagus.

Boiling gold fish bowl
bubbles bile, forcing five months
of fasting into a weakening
Friday fish fry.

Double-bagging every trash
can in case my cheeks burst.

Two fingers merge,
converging upon the apex
of the throat’s gag reflex;
succumbing to a purging urge.

Nourishment culminates
as spoonfuls of mush
forced by gorging
through a tube’s
smorgasbord.

Yards of skeletal refuse discover
refuge within the unfulfilled holes
inside my calcium fortified fences.

Diagnosed by the scientific minds
and poet laureates of my kind with an

eating disorder not otherwise specified.