‘Are You Really Vegetarian?’ by Molly Twomey

Evidence suggests that among patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), about 50% report eating some form of vegetarian diet.

I don’t know if it’s the salt stench that makes me think
of a woman’s seared flesh in Islandmagee.

Or because a lemon in a quail’s gut seems strange as a sun
in a limestone cave or that I heard red meat parasites the heart.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the melt of camembert in two pork
medallions, the swish of sliding king prawns off a skewer.

But I read before that when you consume a small creature
you swallow its pain, a sow barely moving in a trough,

a bantam locked in a cage. My body is already so full
of muscle ache and fractures in its tight gurney, my tongue

tagged with prescriptions. Not that I can’t stand severed heifers
at the butchers pooling blood, the hooked skull of a fallow deer.

But that the nurses like trees, without being asked,
are bending down and dropping peaches in my hand.

From issue #13: spring/summer 2022

About the Author
Molly Twomey has been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Irish Times, The Stinging Fly, Mslexia and elsewhere. In 2021, she won the Eavan Boland Mentorship Award and was chosen for Poetry Ireland’s Introductions Series. Recently awarded an Arts Council Literature Bursary, her debut collection Raised Among Vultures was published by Gallery Press in 2022.