I.
Be proud
of your curves,
they said.
You are more fabulous
than you realize,
they said –
but could you move a little to the left
maybe
stand in the back there behind everyone else –
yes
curves
are a fabulous last place
II.
And what about the stigmas attached
to sizes and scales and choices at every single meal?
Tell me
you have never judged her
for that doughnut
or that salad.
You know
fat girl eating
or just
fat girl –
unhealthy
unappealing
unwelcome
fat girl.
Look at me
and tell me you have never used those words
to scorn her
III.
You
are not privy
to the photograph on my I.D.
some fifty pounds heavier,
half-hearted smile
and eyes glazed over
anything but another picture –
I was there dreading the skinny girl next to me,
dreaming that I would be just as pretty –
tell me
when I walked up here
did you know I lost so much weight?
No.
of course not.
All anyone ever sees
is the mass of me.
Forget about asking if I show my success
No –
I am another fat girl
on death row
just like the rest
IV.
I had a boyfriend once
and what he said to me
should have ended that pretty quickly:
“You would be so
beautiful
if you just lost
a few more pounds.”
Well fuck you sir.
Have I not been struggling with my concept of self
this entire time?
Have you always
objectified
beauty
as something tangible
only for you
only the way you see it?
Have I been unclear with all my screaming?
Tell me
you weren’t the one
taping covers back on my torn Vogue magazines –
tell me
you weren’t the one consoling the bruised egos of directors
who cast me in the chorus
with no lines
and no spotlight
when I walked off that stage –
tell me
you did not just undo
all that I have fought for
with those small
yet venomous words –
V.
You
with your insults hidden in backhanded compliments
do not worry or stress
when you look in the mirror and get dressed for the day
not like I do.
You do not have to force yourself to smile.
Life is easy for you –
fit and thin and perfect.
What I see
is my extra chin
and the way my midsection stretches way past
this limit forced upon me –
I see the scars and stretchmarks
that I am expected to hide
That
is what it means to “dress for your body type.”
VI.
I want to believe
my heavy frame is beautiful
when the world deems it ugly –
I want a world where
I am seen as intelligent
or funny
instead of overweight and unworthy
of any other opinion –
I want an armor
of more than just my thick skin
to stop bullets
which are your words
and your media
and your assumptions –
I want to be free
of the voices
outside and in
that tell me I am not enough;
that I will never
in all the world
be loved
for simply being me
VII.
I lie to my reflection
so she believes
she can go on.
I tell her she is beautiful
just the way she is,
because if I let her know
what I really think
of her image staring back at me
the tears will fall
and I cannot reach through
to wipe them from her eyes.
She
is the truth
behind the mask I wear for the world
in this war we have been waging.
VIII.
I
have fought long and hard
and I am tired.
Tired
of lying.
tired of constantly making up excuses
when asked why I’m crying
tired
of hefting the world’s opinion
on my shoulders –
I cannot see past the storm anymore.
This war
tries so hard to drown me
in self consciousness
to bury me
in blame
for the weight
that I carry
as if it is my fault
I do not fit
their idea
of perfection.
IX.
I still
did not make the choice
to leave him
for his ugly words.
I was shocked
that the man I loved
did not find me
good enough
to be by his side.
I would reason
that he didn’t mean it,
that he thought I was beautiful
because I needed his validation
since I could not find it in myself –
X.
I waited
until he told me
he never loved me
to stop telling myself otherwise.
- K.M. Alleena
There’s always time
for poorly drawn
hearts
The moon
counts on it.
I count on
the moon
for
advice.
2 moons +
1 triangle = a heart.
The neon
density of poorly drawn
muscles
accentuate phosphorescent
nonsense,
this heart, a door knob
rusted and
stuck. I enter the assume.
All I
found
was a need
to draw
poorly
what we
all
claim
beats
inside.
I lick an
envelope, sealed,
then I lick
the wind
with an
agency of new.
I mailed
my poorly drawn heart to you.
You
replied.
With
perfectly drawn ones.
Enchanted
gold-silver-ocean-
melted-crayon
that seemed to consume
the page.
Your
hearts were perfect.
That is
why I had to leave you.
- Thomas Fucaloro
I am from every place,
Where my heart has touched
The roots and leaves.
Where I ran my fingers through the grass,
The garbage on the city sidewalks.
And the manure which through the car windows,
I only ever had my eyes pass by.
I am from where my heart yearns ever to go.
Where my practice in a 40 celcius heated room,
Will turn into my prayers before the Ganges.
I am where the radiation of battle has begun,
Where he slept and his head hit a pillow.
I am from the hills of the Italian peninsula,
Where no one ever spoke English,
And where ancestors learned that not being able to read,
Was the gift to this orator.
I am from many different homes,
Over this lifetime.
And even the life before that.
- M. A. Mahadeo
~for Sara
“What’s that you got there?” people would always ask the boy.
“My heart,” he’d say, staring at the heart-shaped yellow leaf in his cupped hands. “I carry it everywhere.”
“Why?” they’d ask.
“I’m not just going to leave it lying around,” he’d say.
One evening a gust of wind stole it from his hands and whipped it away over the rooftops. Day after day the boy searched every street, every yard, but it was gone.
Until the blonde girl from three houses down knocked on his door. In her hands was his leaf, suspended now in a solid glass cube.
“Where’d you find it?” he said, overjoyed.
“It blew in through my window,” she said. “I knew right away it was yours. I’ve seen you carry it around. I would’ve brought it to you sooner, but I had it sealed inside this cube first. Now the wind can’t ever take it from you, and it won’t crumble away or turn to dust.” She held out the encased leaf. “Here.”
The boy reached for it, then dropped his hands. “You keep it.”
“I can’t. It’s yours.”
“You saved it, so it’s yours now. Besides, it looks brighter when you hold it. It shines like gold—like your hair.”
“Well, whenever you want to see it, you know exactly where to find it.”
“With you,” he said.
“With me,” said the girl from three houses down.
- Scott Hughes
Then, in some nights like these,
I feel cold and lonely in rooms engulfed
By frost and colds lost on their way to the mountain.
I dream of running to the station sometimes
With a train ticket and passport in hand
To board one back to the grave
Where all my brothers and sisters gather
Rich and poor, slave and master, preacher or sinner
Without hope or courage in light and darkness.
I want to fly over the hills and oceans again
Thinking, if the caves of the Himalayas and Andes
Swallow us from the glimpse of man’s radar
Will the sins I committed when I was guilty
Before my blood tainted the wrecks and rocks
Count before the good Lord man extorted divinity from?
Only if I could swim or float on the blue ocean waters
I would wash away the dirt I see in my mind sometimes
Entering a parlour of racists, welcomed by monkeys and
Babies hanging on walls; marble glittering beneath
Poor black ladies paid to scream and exalt racist feudalists
Creeping into our forests in foggy nights,
Maiming and disfiguring mothers and babies
Even animals when man’s blood alone can’t wash
Nubba Mountain and the hot dry soils of Darfur clean.
- Beaton Galafa
After years of suffering, I felt better standing up.
I can’t deny it! All those humdrum days of patient whimpering
were like so much sweat beneath the bed covers.
But now I am walking about, and…
There is no escaping our practical natures.
Like the skyscrapers’ blank, ordered windows
in the sky, in the clouds, in the blue.
What basically is a matter of stuff
is a question of limitlessness… of infinities…
of billions in billings of it, all adding up;
heavy office furniture and equipment hundreds of feet up,
and floors of vast hovering carpets.
Staring upwards beyond the trees,
I imagine those tenants
- their aerial knees -
straightening their ties
and adjusting their sleeves.
The glossy tops of their work-a-day shoes
hide soles reverent as butlers.
And yet, power has its purposes…
Of what use is a penniless King?
- Carl Nelson
Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, but no one
wants to remember that. My dad and his five siblings
all grew up Catholic, and he doesn’t want to remember that
either. In the car, he tells me he’s forgotten the Lord’s Prayer.
My dad asks me if I remember it, and I ask,
how can I remember something you never even taught me?
Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and before we bury him
his nephew asks what liquor will be available at the reception,
and it’s like we all forget how to speak for three minutes.
My father does not remember the Lord’s Prayer. I know
the first seventeen words of it, and close my mouth
for the rest of it. I hum along to it like it’s a hymn
I have known my entire life. I don’t fool anybody.
Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and now Aunt Margaret
is asking me if I think the same will happen to my father.
Before I can answer, she asks me why I don’t go to Mass.
She says, prayer is the best antidepressant I know of, and scoffs
when I say nobody ever taught me how to pray. I say,
a book did teach me the beginning of a prayer in Latin once,
and she scoffs again.
Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and was buried
next to his father, who also drank himself to death.
Aunt Margaret hasn’t spoken to me since I flew back home
to my godless poetry and Zoloft prescription. She’ll never know
that I have never felt more Catholic than I did in that cemetery:
answering for my father’s sins. Mourning a man’s tragic death,
but doing nothing to stop it from happening to another member
of the family. Being rejected from the religion that may have never
been mine to begin with.
Uncle Sparky drank himself to death, and so did Grandpa Larry,
and my dad calls me after finishing off three bottles of wine
at least once a month. Each time, he recites the Lord’s Prayer for me,
and he always does it flawlessly.
- Lydia Havens
Dear Maura,
Do not resurrect the woolly mammoth.
I keep track of you, I keep track of the news, and I know that you conceivably could do so soon, but for your own sake: do not resurrect the woolly mammoth.
I understand that scientists are more aware of the ethics of these sorts of things than English teachers, and I understand that career advice is best received from someone in the same line of work, and I understand that even then, advice is best received when solicited (which this is not), but even so, here I am.
Given that this is your line of work, I’m sure you know more than I do what a woolly mammoth’s life might have been like, and that in all reality the only thing I am qualified to know about them is how many L’s are in woolly.
But even so.
In general, I am in favor of cloning and the like—we’ve talked about this. We talked, at John’s that night after organic chemistry, about cloning and progress, but this is a different animal entirely. Because Maura, you forget that I know you.
I remember your mother on the phone, telling you that you would always be unloved and alone because of what you chose to be. I remember the stares that followed you even in a liberal college, and I remember the way I walked into your room with Chinese takeout one night to find you crying. You asked me if it was ever possible to stop feeling guilty for being yourself.
And for all of those reasons, I ask you not to resurrect the woolly mammoth.
I’m sure you know this already, but we killed them. Their environment was dying as the glaciers did, and we hunted them to extinction. And perhaps now we would not, perhaps humanity would value their un-extinction as too valuable to hunt.
But I think we both know that is too much to hope for.
I think we both know that the nature of humanity has not changed, that without an environment safe from us, they would be gone again soon.
Because Maura, when we bring to life the things we know cannot live, all we are trying to do is prove that we can. You are trying to prove that a woman like yourself can be beloved as a scientist, by bringing to life a species you know full well is doomed to fail.
I am not saying your quest to be loved is a doomed one, no. But the battles you are choosing to win that war are doomed ones, ones you will fail no matter your immediate success.
What I have seen though, what I have watched through twenty years and thousands of students, is that anyone trying to prove their right to exist wants to bring doomed beings into creation. They are Frankenstein, trying to survive and being twisted into monsters by anyone who watches. An English teacher knows this much.
And perhaps this is too pessimistic, but I am exhausted of watching people create and then see their creations destroyed. Maura, I cannot bear that for you too.
I do not want you to have to prove that a woolly mammoth can exist to know that you can too, and because I know it cannot, I beg you not to try. I do not want you to have to bear its second extinction, I do not want you to have to bear watching your own hope die in proxy.
It is of course, possible that I am wrong. Mammoths would be kept in captivity, protected, but I know this is not your dream for them. I know you will look into their eyes and see failure reflected back, and I do not want that for you.
Maura, we have scorched the earth on which woolly mammoths walked, they have gone. Bringing them back will not mean that was not done, it will only mean that eventually, it will happen again. But you are still here, brilliant and queer and beautiful, walking scorched earth as if it were lush grass.
You are existing, you are not extinct. That is all the proof you need of your own worthiness.
Your friend,
Harry
- Andy Stowers