The Tiniest Poem by Patti Masterman

The tiniest supermodels
wear jumpsuits, made of the cut apart fingers
of gloves, with matching underwear
the size of a single eye-patch;
the thin, telescopically photogenic people
seem to come equipped with matching, mite-sized imaginations
that can't conceive of an ample waistline, an over-flowing bosom
or even Grandmother's boundlessly comforting lap of childhood.

You can watch them daintily nibble on their carrot-tops
with a side of a few acorns
espousing their minute, restricted opinions
with much hand waving and gesticulations
to burn off a few extra units of food energy.

Why do spacious minds seem to occupy
larger sized bodies; and of such generosity
they'd cook you an entire vat of lasagna
just to enjoy an unrestrained hour of your company;
but I can feel myself slowly starving to death
by the mouse sized nibbles of intellect, of the slender,
with their caloric phobias; of inhaling even too much sun.

I can't accommodate their agoraphobic minds
even within my own surplus cells;
surely they secrete all their expansive thoughts
inside a small clutch made of springiest spandex; so slimly invisible
you can't see it inside their pocket at all,
whenever they happen to turn sideways.

So painfully thin, they have no reflection anymore,
and can no longer cast a shadow;
they are only a rumor, circling around in the exhaust
above a dry cleaner's shop;
the eggless meringue, atop a wafer-thin slice
of jellied water-
watercress not allowed.

When they are cremated, there is no smoke
and no ashes left over; only a thin, black soot
which reeks, ever so slightly
of burnt chocolate bon-bons.