Starving Artist

You say you need paper and pencil more than food,
and something to honor more than paper and pencil,

that you’d rather starve from the outside in
than from the inside out, rather look thin than sound it.

I’ve been listening to you say these things
while I stack peas on the precise prongs of my fork.

I am not an animal, I am not an animal, I hear you repeat.
I chew. I swallow. I lower my fork and I begin again, too.

I should tell you that given an empty conk and an empty peapod,
I prefer these peas. The illusion of the ocean sung forever

by a barnacled mouth could never slip down my throat
from full to half full to empty so coolly as this glass of water.