"/" by derek lessard

breakfast
bellring.
Animal.
lunch
bellring.
Animal.
supper
bellring.
Animal.
hungerdrive.
cigarettes after,
follow suit.
Orchestrated call of food.
Stride of shame
through cough gauntlets,
strength in numbers found,
spent on campus yardgrounds.
Smoke breaks cornered
in their rooms,
walled-in coordinates.
Empty spaces cloy,
glottal stop divisions-
starving vela long,
surfeits in shifts
to not become
one half of
a before and after photo,
bloated with success.
Still, I eat a third
from every fractioned meal
each day,
square pegs
fit evenly
into round holes,
circularity of days
obedient to rhythms
of resetting suns,
Circadian.
Living
for the weekend,
dying
for the week.
Differ from,
defer to
God,
all in one
sunrise.
Body
clock
ticking,
biologs
last noshes.
When a back is turned to light
its front is cast in shadow,
and its other half
is night.
By our limitations of design,
though we begin and end,
time continues
to be time.
Miraged oasis,
remoteness
of the snack-
“I’ll eat just half.”
Slimness still so far
from feeling whole,
bisects being
full.
Belief in fleeting distance
zeroes on a close-
must go further,
still-
just to
reach again-
always only yet.
I’ve heard
cold turkey patients
got fat-
but we’re not
so different
when we’re seated
in the same room,
talking up
a single appetite.
Wholly divided
by each other,
suspended
over
the chasm
of a quotient’s separation
from a passing future,
we find repast
together,
in this bitter fast
of soluble holes;
puzzle pieces
hidden in
another
word.