that my very existence blesses other massive bodies
begs them to drink from a chalice of my toxic blood
and melts dignity into hot spit on their tongues.
What you think you mean when you say that I Glorify Obesity is,
How dare she.
What you actually mean when you say that I Glorify Obesity
is that indeed I am Glorious
because who would not exalt something
as miracle as a living body?
You mean to say that I carry this body
every day like a sacrament
to revere the way I keep rising despite a world
who does not want the truth of me.
You mean to say that I am a cup runneth over
that my walk preaches a gospel of rubbing thighs
that my arm fat jiggles a pair of fleshy tambourines
that my ass sways like a well-trained choir
that my fupa is an altar built around something holy
and worth bowing down to.
Now, you can be the devil I dance away or you can dance
your devils away with me.
Hating me will not absolve you of your own shameful
sins against the body
and I will not carry them on my back either.
I will just be a one-woman tent revival
with the lights on late
sweat-slick and handing out glory.
What you actually mean when you say that I Glorify Obesity
is Hallelujah.
So go ahead and say Hallelujah.
Say Hallelujah to the back fat
Hallelujah to the generous rolls of flesh
Hallelujah to the cellulite
Hallelujah to the stretch marks
Hallelujah to the still-thumping heart.
Sing it to the rafters.
Glory Glory
glory
glory
HALLOWEEN SHOPPING WITH MY NIECE
Do you want to be a kitty cat?
No.
a princess?
I’m already a princess.
Of course you are.
Oh look, you could be a slice of pizza!
Nahh …
Do you want to be Doc McStuffins?!
I want to be something super scary!
But, Doc McStuffins is terrifying to the Patriarchy.
What’s a patriarchy? Sounds like a kind of dinosaur?
Yes, Darling, the Patriarchy IS a dinosaur.
Is it a very big dinosaur? Cause I could be a bigger one.
I could be a dinosaur that eats a patriarchy.
GRIEF
Written from a prompt by Siaara Freeman
Grief is my stern-mouthed mother,
though people swear we must be sisters
the way I age with every loss.
It’s in the eyes, they say.
She has come again
to dote on me
since my love has gone.
She shows up unannounced and never alone.
She comes swinging a bird cage with a cockatoo named Bargaining
perched inside.
It repeats everything I say back to me minus the question marks.
Depression is my father.
He demands that I carry him from room to room
while he haunts my house with deep slow sighs.
Anger is a territorial child in a dirty party dress and scuffed patent
leather shoes
looking for things to break
while my spinster aunt, Denial, stands in the front yard humming
Didn’t We Almost Have It All.
She never comes inside on the off-chance Love is coming back.
I feed them whatever I happen to have in the freezer.
It is an unthawed bounty of lonesome
an entire wedding cake minus the groom
the other halves of all the dinners I have ever taken
the time to lovingly cook
only to eat my portion alone over the kitchen sink
a brick of foil-wrapped anniversaries uncelebrated
a cold-cut spread of photographs and love letters.
When every stomach has been fed,
when at last we are full and numb-mouthed from feasting on freezer-
burnt wanting,
when Grief is dozing off in front of the nightly news,
and Bargaining is building a nest of newspaper obituaries,
when Depression lays whiskey-sick and snoring
across the couch
and Anger has tantrumed herself into a fitful sleep
under the dinner table,
my grandmother, Acceptance, who stores promises in the deep
creases of her brow, hands me a dish towel to dry each plate and
platter that she washes until they sparkle like new again.
AN INCOMPLETE PINTEREST BOARD OF USES FOR THE ABUNDANCE OF CONDOMS THAT EXPIRED AFTER HE LEFT
-Dish mittens! (like dish gloves, except not)
-Learn to make balloon animals for the neighborhood kids
-Donate them to an up-and-coming drug cartel for filling with heroin and transporting
-Rainboots for the cat
-Throw them into a bowl of not-yet-expired condoms and play a fun game of condom roulette (aka whoopsie baby)
-Fill them with your spinster tears and throw them at happy couples
-Covers for the bananas, zucchini, cucumbers, and other oblong fruits and veggies
-Cut them length-wise, dry them in the sun, and sew them together to make a protective sofa cover.
-Sell them on Etsy as “infinity change purses”
-Sleeping bags for caterpillars
-Just write new dates on them and hope for the best
-Draw faces on them and use them as finger puppets to re-enact all the moments that went wrong in your last relationship and snapchat them to your ex
-Keep rolled-up copies of all your inevitable restraining orders safe and dry in them
HOROSCOPE FOR THE PREMATURE SCORPIO: MARCH 2013
That Libra is your Diego Rivera.
When you can hear your ex fucking the next-door neighbor thru your shared bedroom wall, find a new lover and fuck louder. If a dance partner is not readily available without settling (as you are no longer permitted to settle), buy a new vibrator and make him jealous of you and you alone. Permit yourself to make the sounds he could never elicit from you. Make him jealous of the way he cannot feel whole without you the way you can feel whole without him. The way you can wear empty hands like a new trend that he simply cannot pull off. Stop mourning. He will never be over you. He will be ungrateful and distracted but he will never have it so good. Karma, it’s petty that way. You love him as you have always loved him but you will die first and cannot wait for him to catch up. If he misses the rendezvous point, you go on without him.
Lucky numbers: his birthday, his new lover’s birthday and the next full moon.
INCANTATION FOR AUTONOMY
And so, I whisper into scorched grass
a call to all of the witches burned for being feral bodies.
I beg you to show yourselves in the fireplaces
of congressional figures who make choices against the autonomy of
these righteous bodies that cradle a uterus.
Scream something unholy thru the pilot lights of their furnaces.
Haunt the warmth of their existence with a raving and
howling hunger they cannot possibly feed.
First, each man who aims to carve an orphanage of cribs from our hip
bones; provoke him to strip naked in the center of town, account for
every blemish on his holy flesh.
And then, dance wild and naked in the prayer candles
of every goody woman who robs choice from our mouths.
Drive her into the river to prove she can sink
gracefully as only a truly righteous woman would.
Come dear witches, remind them of what we can do
when our bodies are used as evidence for our undoing.
FAT JOKE
The old joke goes:
Patient walks into the doctor’s office and says, “Doctor, it hurts when
I move my arm like this, what should I do?” and the doctor says, “So,
don’t move your arm like that.”
Now,
Fat Girl walks into the doctor’s office and says, “Doctor, it hurts
when I move my arm like this, what should I do?” and the doctor
says, “Have you considered weight loss surgery?”
Fat Girl walks into the doctor’s office for a flu shot
and gets a lecture about BMI
Fat Girl walks into the doctor’s office for an earache and gets asked if
she’s ever eaten a salad
Fat Girl walks into the doctor’s office with a spider bite and the
doctor obsesses over how low her blood pressure is—low for such a
fat person anyway—and insists on checking it 3 times before he
believes it, has to be reminded of the purple mass of throbbing spider
venom that brought her here in the first place
Fat Girl walks into the doctor’s office to ask about antidepressants
and gets prescribed exercise instead
Fat Girl walks into the doctor’s office for a standard 3-month followup
appointment and the doctor says, “Have you considered weight
loss surgery?”
Fat Girl gets tired of only ever being diagnosed fat
so Fat Girl stops walking into the doctor’s office
Fat Girl walks to the store
and has insults flicked at her like still-lit
cigarettes from passing cars
Fat Girl walks onto a crowded bus and stands because she does not
wish to share a seat and make anyone else uncomfortable
Fat Girl logs onto the internet, gets comments from keyboard doctors
that claim concern for her health
suggests crash diets
suggests flat-tummy tea
suggests diet pills that would stop fat girl’s heart but fat girl will have
died trying to get thin
Fat Girl walks into the world and says,
“World, it hurts to exist like this.”
World says, “So stop existing like that”
World says, “Have you considered weight loss surgery?”
would rather she slice herself open than to exist as she does
side effects be damned
Despite all of this, Fat Girl still manages to love her fat body
World says, “Stop glorifying obesity.”
Fat Girl walks up to World, says, “I do not owe you shrinking, you
know. I do not owe you thinness, attempted thinness, or desired
thinness because you assume thinness equals health. I do not owe you
health, perceived or otherwise, to receive basic respect. I am
deserving of existence. I am deserving of care. I am deserving of first
no harm done.”
World says,
“That is the best joke we’ve heard all day.”
POTENTIAL SLOGANS FOR OKCUPID
OkCupid: Who Knew You Could Be So Disinterested in SO Many People?!
OkCupid: Because Otherwise You’ll Die Alone and the Cat Will Eat Your Eyeballs Like Fruit Cups
OkCupid: Because You Overbought Condoms and They Expire in a Week
OkCupid: Because You Didn’t Want an Orgasm Anyway
OkCupid: Got Shame? Want Some?
OkCupid: Because Hope Is for 20-Year-Olds
OkCupid: Helping Married Couples Proposition Bisexuals for Threesomes Since 2001
OkCupid: An Online Catalog for Hate Fucking
OkCupid: We Literally Don’t Know What A Clitoris Is!!
OkCupid: We Literally Don’t Care What A Clitoris Is!!
OkCupid: All of the Dick Pics Without Any of the Hassle of Actually Wanting Them
OkCupid: Because Dating Should Be Like Picking a Scab
OkCupid: Helping to Keep Boxed Wine Sales up Since 2004
OkCupid: All the Motivation You Need to Take Back Your Terrible Ex in One Place
OkCupid: Come for the Boredom, Stay Because You Are Literally Out of Options.
REJECTION #2
Dear MrMan1980,
Thank you for your submission: wanna see my cock?!
Unfortunately, we are not accepting Flash Fiction at this time. Please check with us again in 6 months when our standards have dropped or perhaps when one of our exes gets engaged again and we are eating icing straight from the tub while wearing our prom dress. Best of luck in finding a home for your cock.
Kindest Regards,
Nothing is Ok, Cupid Weekly
JOY BUZZER
An Extended Limerick About the Clitoris AKA a Climerick
There once was a man who was sure
His cock was a kind of a cure
He seemed unprepared
When his lover declared
That his love making was hit or miss
The answer dear sir, is the Clitoris
This poem is a lie
There’s way more than one guy
In fact, I would say there are millions more.
PRIME CUTS
Every time I go thru airport security
despite their pervy x-ray glasses,
my belly gets an intimate blue-gloved rub down.
They say, I alarmed in that area
but don’t I always?
Perhaps I should submit a butcher’s diagram of all the things they
might find in my fat.
The upper left quadrant is primarily
made up of inconsequential things:
swallowed bubblegum and the hearts of my enemies.
The bottom left IS actually made up of snack cakes
suspended in feelings,
a jello mold of angst and sugar.
If you are trying to find my shame it should be there
somewhere but there are better things blocking the way.
A humble museum of loves lost and kept
occupies the upper right portion.
There is a gift shop full of stuff former lovers have left behind.
it really is a must see.
The bottom right is where all of my awesome is stored.
It looks like an illegal fireworks trailer—
if you jostle it too much there will be a loud
and beautiful explosion.
This is where I get all of that confidence
you so are perplexed by,
the very thing that likely sounded the alarm.
The fucks I give about what anyone thinks
of my terrifying body
are all stored in my belly button.
Notice how it is an empty bowl waiting to be filled.
MY SUGAR, MY SWEET
You were baking a magnificent cake
3 tiers of white buttercream
Enough to share with all our friends
You said all you needed was a little more sugar
You went to the neighbors to borrow a cup
And did not come back for 3 days
When you finally crawled into bed
You slept thru Thanksgiving
All winter you ran next door
For sugar, you said
For us, you said
That magnificent cake, you said, just needed a little more sugar
It would all be so perfect if I would just trust you
If I would stop asking so many fucking questions
All your sweetness traded for sugar
When you tried to trade my sweetness too
I changed the locks
You moved into the apartment next door
Promised he
r our cake
Now the neighbor pours sugar into the bottomless cup where
Your nose used to be.
A GREEN BOOK FOR MY NIECE
For Kylie’a
You who was born with raw knuckles and open eyes
who sleeps arms crossed and angry because you already know.
There will be a day when you slip into your father’s anger
like child feet into grown-man boots
you will stomp and scream and rage
and this rage will look foolish
except to us who also have black fathers.
There will be days you struggle with
knowing where you belong
for feeling like you belong everywhere
and nowhere at all.
There will be years when you feel bruised like worlds collided.
So, when they ask (and they always ask) what you are
tell them you are made up of whole worlds collided
supernova beautiful in its violent right to exist
violent like the night your white mother wrapped her privilege around
her knuckles
and reached thru the driver’s side window of a woman who dared to
rename you something hateful and pulled back
without a single scratch and with a handful
of blonde hair writing an apology.
Remember this when you feel far from her
(and you will feel far from her).
Let no one tell you that you must choose a side
that you are more of one or too much of another.
Enough is a foul word.
You will learn to recognize hate thru its sugartooth smile
recognize whose heart is a sundown town.
You will learn to skin backhanded compliments down
to their racist bones and leave them for dead.
Be sure to tell them
that you are beautiful without conditions
that you are valid
that you are no one’s token
no one’s tragedy.
Tell them this in whatever tongue is most yours.
Code switching is an awful party
trick I hope you never have to learn.
Remember that the opposite of passing is not failing.
The opposite of passing is overcoming.
The opposite of passing is permanence.