Fats here.
Happy Friday! Hooray for you (and me!) for surviving another week!
Within the last year, I’ve embraced the importance of routine exams and follow-up appointments. I consider myself very lucky to have medical and dental insurance so I might as well put it to good use, right? Anyway, I had my annual physical exam two weeks ago. I told the Nurse Practitioner that I consider myself generally healthy. My lab results that came back normal would validate my claim.
However, I couldn’t help but think about how many pounds I’ve gained since I moved from California to Ohio. My body mass index indicates that I’m overweight. I am the worst when it comes to diet and lifestyle but I’ve decided to do better. If there’s one thing that never worked for me, it would be diet. I could never stick to it no matter how hard I try.
The poem I’m sharing today is related to diet, body image, and maybe a little bit of self care. It’s taken from a poetry anthology called The Fat Sonnets, which was written by Samantha Zighelboim. Timothy Donnelly writes:
“We live in a fat-phobic, fat-stigmatizing society, and Samantha Zighelboim is calling us out… These poems are brutally candid, plangent, heart-wrenching, uncompromisingly beautiful and beautiful in their refusal to compromise… It also reveals Zighelboim to be an astute observer of the human subject generally: of how we are both determined and distorted by societal and material forces; of how we might prove nothing more than, but are never simply, our bodies…”
Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Amy at The Poem Farm.
Thanks, Amy!
Imagine How Perfect You’ll Be When It’s Over
the no carb diet the juicing diet the cabbage soup diet
the one day one week one month Master Cleanse
all your mom’s diets friends’ diets doctors’ diets
the laxatives the appetite suppressants the dehydration
the starving the binges the fingers the raw throat
the palpitations the burst capillaries totally normal until
it’s not replace electrolytes lose electrolytes replace then lose
then replace then lose but keep gaining keep fattening faithfully
keep going back to the beginning the guilt the bread the cakes
the well-intentioned suggestions the fantasies entertained
the liposuction the tummy tuck the stomach stapling
the reconstructive surgery all that skin all that space
always more to fill always the too much
Gathering Books 
That sonnet sweeps you up in its need-to-fix-yourself frenzy. The title expresses something important (As the editor of a book called “Imperfect,” I am really wary of seeking “perfect”!)
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