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.
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