The Fat Girl's Abecedary
by David Starkey

    Fat girl, terrestrial, my summer, my night,
    How is it I find you in difference, see you there
    In a moving contour, a change not quite completed?
    --Wallace Stevens, Notes Towards a Supreme Fiction


    A
    "A" is for aggravate and abnormal and assholes
    Like you, Mr. Stevens, whose acceptance I don't need.

    B
    "B" is the biweekly shouts I hear from passing cars,
    The blabbermouths, the bile and the bitter rot.

    C
    "C" stands for capacious, a description of my heart,
    Too, before it nearly collapsed from these cuts.

    D
    "D" is dummy up and duck out of the way
    Of the next dose of barely disguised disgust.

    E
    This one's for edge, as in Getting an edge on,
    Or, She's always so edgy, why doesn't she just relax?

    F
    The Fat Girl, of course becomes the Fat Lady,
    Who sings when fat men finish playing at their games.

    G
    "G" is for gut, that goddamned guttural grunt
    That signifies extra weight, both inside and out.

    H
    Hormones: As in, Hush, she can't help her hormones,
    Or, Hormones, my ass, she just shouldn't eat.


    I
    "I" is a personal pronoun, I is me.
    I am incorporeal: I is what you don't see.

    J
    "J" is for jumbo and junkfood and jiggle,
    Thoughts jumbled up and jumpy and junk heap.

    K
    Klutzes get the kiss-off, if we get kissed at all,
    Which is unlikely; more likely, we kvetch.

    L
    "L" is lousy, the way I feel after making lemonade
    And being left with nothing but the rinds

    M
    Mordacious, as in Sarcastic or prone to biting,
    Motherfucker, and no mystery about why.

    N
    A nubbin is what is left of my sense of nicety
    And decorum when it's late at night, when it's night.

    O
    "O" is the shape of my mouth when you think of me,
    An orb that's always open, my omphalos.

    P
    Pudgy, pursy, plump, pot-bellied, portly,
    Puffy, paunchy, pig-faced, porked-out.

    Q
    "Q" is the questions that I can't answer:
    Am I God's quarry? His quarrel? His unknown quantity?

    R
    "R" is round and rounder, roundabout and roundelay,
    Roundish, roundly, round-the-clock, round steak.

    S
    "S" makes the shovel you think that I eat with,
    "S" makes the skeleton you want me to be.


    T
    Time out, you think. Time to trade up to a sleeker model.
    Ta-ta, thunder thighs. Time to trash this tripe.

    U
    Perhaps you hadn't noticed that you're being unfair,
    Unkind, unsophisticated, unscientific and unreal.

    V
    "V" is for the dreams I sometimes have of vamping,
    Of becoming Vampira, of hearing Va-va-va-voom!

    W
    "W" is my whoop of joy, my wide smile
    That, for all my troubles, I'll never be a wife.

    X
    You are the xenophobe in this, Mr. Stevens;
    You are the one who fears foreign things, not I.

    Y
    I'd like to yank some sense into you once,
    To hear you yelp in pain, to shut your yakety-yak

    Z
    "Z" is the zygote where it all started, the zombie process
    Of creation, that zone of bitter irony, the Zen.






Copyright © 2024 by Red River Review. First Rights Reserved. All other rights revert to the authors.
No work may be reproduced or republished without the express written consent of the author.