Eat Me Flashcards
(13 cards)
“___” is a pun, subverting age into weight to allude to the fetish explored in the poem. (Eat Me)
“When I hit thirty”
The cake has “___” and is “___”, which suggests an aspect of devotion in supplying excess to the subject of the partner’s desire. (Eat Me)
“three layers of icing” and “home-made”
The cake read “___” and “___”, Agbabi’s use of caesura and monosyllabic language emphasising the speaker’s simplistic, obedient agreement. However, she “___”, suggesting a lack of enjoyment from the speaker as she instead caters to the wants of her partner. (Eat Me)
“EAT ME.”, and “[she] ate” and “didn’t even taste it”
Agbabi uses plosive alliteration to illustrate how the speaker’s hips “___”, both to emphasise the physical changes she has undergone to accommodate her partner’s desires, but to perhaps allude to the power the speaker holds which she will later utilise in the poem to achieve freedom. (Eat Me)
“judder like a juggernaut”
Further plosive alliteration is used in the voice of the speaker’s partner, as indicated by the use of italics, echoing “___”. Here, plosives are used to suggest aggression or forceful control the speaker’s partner exerts to manipulate her self-perception to align with his fetish. (Eat Me)
“The bigger the better”
The speaker’s partner desires to see her “___”, the simile acting as a biblical allusion the original sin of Eve. Therefore, Agbabi correlates the speaker both with temptation and destruction. The speaker is then presented as holding an aspect of power once again, which subverts the initial submission to her partner. (Eat Me)
“swell like forbidden fruit”
Agbabi describes the speaker as “___”, wherein the enjambment emphasises the endless and constant expansion of her physical body and the growing severity of her captivity. (Eat Me)
“a tidal wave of flesh / too fat to leave”
Her helplessness is emphasised through Agbabi’s use of anaphora, presenting the speakers as “___” to “___”, “___” or to “___”. The repetition enforces the inescapability of her submission to her partner’s desires as she is restricted by her own body. (Eat Me)
“too fat” to “leave”, “buy a pint of full-fat milk” and “be called chubby”
The final three stanzas present a change to active verbs like “___”, “___” and “___”, suggesting the speaker is gaining power and control after her realisation that her submission to this fetish is detrimental and limiting. (Eat Me)
“allowed”, “flowed” and “rolled”
Agbabi uses the rhetorical question “___” to illustrate the speaker’s resolve in her decision to find freedom and empowerment in the object of desire she has become. (Eat Me)
“and how / could I not roll over on top”
The speaker suffocates her partner as he “___”. The use of enjambment perhaps emphasises the prolonged suffering endured by the partner, reflecting the slow decline in autonomy she is protesting by killing him. (Eat Me)
“drowned / in [her] flesh”
The speaker’s partner is left deceased, “___”, which suggests he was a victim of his own desire. Agbabi’s destruction of a purveyor of the male gaze gives power to the objectified speaker in her revolt against her restriction in complying with his fetish. (Eat Me)
“his eyes bulging with greed”
The poem ends with the simple sentence, “___”. The end-stop represents the finality of the speaker’s exploitation as a fetishised object, resolving the poem with her reclamation of authority. (Eat Me)
“There was nothing else to eat in the house.”
