I walked into my boss’ office earlier today to grab some hand sanitizer, being something of a germaphobe. One of the IT guys was sitting at her desk, working on her computer. She was on the opposite side, shuffling some papers.
“We’re all doing Curves, starting next week. You want to do it with us?” Bosslady asked, giving me that look. I get it, lady; I’m fat. This fact does not escape me every time I look in the mirror. No need to keep reminding.
With some effort, I managed to quell the urge to roll my eyes. There’s always some new diet the office girls are trying out, and it changes from week to week. They always ask me if I want join in. Weight Watchers, Atkins, South Beach, we’re going to the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays, do you want to come? All said with innocence brimming in their eyes, all guileless good intentions. One day I pranced into Bosslady’s office in a new outfit I’d spent $100 dollars on, makeup carefully applied, hair done. She’d been critical of my clothes the week before, so, ever eager to please, I attempted to find something more appropriate. I thought I looked pretty good, but she just looked me up and down, lips pursed, and told me I needed some lipstick. I quit trying to look nice after that.
I eyed the piles of copied paper she was organizing on her desk. Charts and graphs and detailed lists of what miniscule, bland bits of food one is allowed to eat. Boiled eggs, no yolk, and a single slice of broiled Canadian bacon, or something similar, probably. I wrinkled my nose at the thought.
“No thanks. Too much work for me.” The IT guy seconded my opinion. Bosslady kept giving me the look that said, Really? Have you had a look at yourself lately? Might want to reconsider.
I tried to justify myself. “I’ve been cutting back on my own. Already lost a little.” I demonstrated this by pulling at the waistband of my jeans, showing them the gap in between them and the skin of my gut. I was quite proud of it, that half inch of empty space that signified all my hard work over the past few weeks. Sure, it wasn’t a big change, but it was a start.
Bosslady continued to look me up and down as if I’d crawled out of a gutter somewhere and she wasn’t sure how to get rid of the disgusting creature that had appeared in her office. My smile withered and died under her gaze. Bosslady is twice my age and has pushed out four kids, yet remains a size four. My girth, and my accompanying lackadaisical attitude about it, puzzles her.
She said something about not seeing any gap between jeans and skin, and I made a joke to change the subject and distract her from the topic of my physique. She started giggling at me, as did the IT guy.
“Jeez, way to kick a dog when it’s down,” I continued, making a kicking motion with my leg. She was laughing too hard to talk at this point, which was the opportune moment to exit, stage right.
“Okay, I’m just gonna go and throw up now,” I called back to them.
“Yeah, right!” She said, laughing. “I’d like to see that!”
I try not to let it get to me, all the office nonsense. It’s standard procedure for anyone who works in this kind of environment, surrounded by women. Size, weight, diet; these things dominate the conversations wherever herds of women go. Most of the time, they don’t mean anything by it. It’s helping, in their minds, so I don’t take offense to it. Just make a joke, usually at my own expense, and change the subject. Go down the hall to the bathroom when you’re certain no one else is around, stick your finger down your throat. Never eat anything in front of them, especially from the vending machine- Bosslady tends to keep track of how many visits I make to it. Go home, look at yourself in the mirror in your underwear, hate yourself a little more. Smoke another Marlboro, never let the tears fall down your face.
I’ve trashed all my dieting books
one fell swoop, arm swept across the shelf
pages plummeting down into the garbage.
I’m somewhat satisfied by this
ritualistic declaration of change.
Of course it won’t last.
My bulk is explosive
tick-ticking away, the detonator hidden
within the recesses of flesh,
organs tinged rose-pink.
Take a drag and contemplate the exhale,
know it’s all just futile theatrics
that manana, or the next,
one spoonful will be resisted.
Then on, exponentially, to the Nth degree,
a cartoon snowball rolled down a mountainside;
the inevitable splat at the end.
Fuck: to have sexual intercourse with. Generally used as a verb, but the beauty of fuck is it’s flexibility. It can be used as an interjection (i.e., Fuck!!!! I just slammed my finger in the door!), or as a noun, such as when referring to a particular person. From the pseudo-Latin fuccant, meaning (they) fuck.
Here’s my shortlist:
1. Fuck: to have sex, release some hormones and stress, as in one step above rutting animals. Not the guy you bring home to mother, rather, the guy that sends you to the clinic the next week for a pap smear.
2. Fucked: to be caught in a hopeless situation where no solution is easily manufactured. Adding the word ‘up’ to that means you’re being belligerent and have a pressing appointment with the porcelain god very, very soon.
3. Fucking-A: I don’t have the slightest idea. It’s just fun to say.
4. Fuck Around: What my best friend’s slut of a roommate does on a nightly basis. The result of which is Chlamydia, Crabs, and Gonorrhea, thus far (that we know of).
5. Give a fuck: to care about something/someone. As in, I don’t.
Four years of intensive study on the English language has obviously turned me into a nutter. Well, fuck it.
Broken silence stutters;
an interrupted heart beats
reverberates and seeks a rhythm
that levels out the pain.
Laments that hang on tip of tongue
in hollow silence, strangle the lungs
a life this way is only unlived
occasional fire-sparks pricking the veil
little needle holes against the gloom;
nothing echoes through this skin of mine.
Only the distinct tiny wounds,
little nicks in the aorta.
Air’s cut off again, strangled and drowning
in the putrid lathered waves.
Like a little girl standing at a wishing-well,
more hopes pinned on a solitary penny
than a zealot’s prayer to his deum.
Looking through the window-pane
in silent eyes, I see the sunny meadowed bliss
but do not fight my restraints,
sparing them from the reflections in my eyes
all mirrored haunted shadows
My heart is beating, beating, beating
Rumbling, rolling, crashing, drowning
Deep in the ocean at your feet.
A pace within two lungs can’t keep
Labored breaths keep in timed chant
the frantic meter boding madness,
not quiet.
My heart is a blooming bright blossom
A red-orange flesh muscle leafing out
drooping petals veined with blue arteries
fragile chalice, opened up;
It’s peak but a moment’s hectic beat
then lifelines wither, dry, fall away
No sun to warm the tips.
My heart is fading, scrambling, pleading
an imploding bomb, a dying star
collapsing within, exploding without
A red-orange mushroom cloud in my chest
whole extremities obliterated, organs exposed.
Only you can make my heart stop.
You took me to a book fair once, and I
walked down every row, read every title
my face alive and arms of books. You must have been bored
but never let on, and bought me every book
that I yearned for. The sun was setting
amber and gold in a spotless sky, ours the only truck left in the lot
and you let the tailgate down so we could watch the day die.
I wish I could remember exactly what was said
it’s important to know now. But I can’t,
only recall the smell of warm sun, and laughter;
all the joy the first brush of spring carries.
I didn’t know it then.
Dizzy from the earth-tilt underfoot, I couldn’t comprehend
only knew the sun was warm and the day endless
and I loathed the time when dark would fly in, taking with it
the warmth and my perfect day.
And I realized, for the first time, that your eyes were green.
I
went to the square once, only seventeen
black platform boots and naivete.
Cigars in the air and French in the streets
I chose my cards with careful concentration
while she smoked, all at ease. Seeming just another
of the gilded flower children who’d wandered south in the ’60s,
set up roots in the Quarter, bought their weed from the Ninth.
But anyone with half the sight could see the things
that pulsed around the hot pink cloth
adorned with yellow stars; her altar to the Goddess,
which held no runes for hearth or home.
Afterwards, on the Rue Burbon, I had only one purpose-
drinking to look like all the tourists.
Tried washing everything she’d just confirmed
off the residue of my brain. But everywhere I turned
smoke from black clove cigarettes assaulted my nose;
that sickly-sweet smell, like heaps of dead oranges
somehow worse than the smell that ever accompanies the Quarter.
Clouds hang low and heavy-gray
against dusky smoldered skies
humidity so thick it weighs you down,
a childhood security blanket clasped
too tight against the throat.
Summer’s so near you can almost touch it,
gray skies bringing it in from the gulf
everyone all dewy with that southern belle glow
and those Bermuda shorts that just won’t die,
a moist promise in the air.
Lulling drum of air energizes and makes sluggish
drawing sweet heavy-thick sighs from mouths,
’til time itself is drugged
spinning long days, and closed-in nights,
stirred up emotions, and harboring no peace.
The Wind carries a strong edge tongit,
a simmering unhappiness lurks beneath the lull
which smacks of an inherent, subversive malice;
and I wait, uneasy; unable to grasp this response
something so internal and dark and vaguely primitive.
The evening drives boys to bottles and fights,
girls to lights and a temporary balm for the vulnerabilities,
and lovers spring up with the first sweet-corn shoots
while I wait, listening for the first hard gulf breeze
that contains the realization underlying the air.
Summer’s made her way down south
wrapped us up in her humid cloak
and the sun finally warms my bones.
No water in the streets now, just holes
in the skyline; cold concrete earth
dotted here and there, like stumps of old trees
slain by the winds. Down there they struggle on
hammers on nails on shotgun houses
centuries old, with new Romeo poles;
but its still quiet up here.
There’s more of us now to watch the life
running in frantic fear below, not a second to be lost;
all we have is endless time. So we watch
from third floor windows, safe in our lofty perches
where natives know not to venture.
From fire or flood, we are the attic-damned
who fled towards heaven to escape the hell
that killed us on rooftops and balconies;
the forgotten children who linger
in this city that burned and drowned.
The new house was shiny, all re-done
uptown, upclass, upneighborhood,
not a single soul loafing aimlessly
no dealers or addicts or children in the streets.
Mother and Father speak to me in turns,
a tennis ball lobbed back and forth
so dutiful in their parental concern, as I sit
uninterested in their garden growing chatter,
silent and gaze affixed on nothingness outside the window. Quiet, finally,
and only the hum of my own thoughts
a world more vibrant, and lovely,
roaming the sapphire hills of an over-able imagination.
I do not notice their glances, those worried fearful looks
moving ’round me with fixed gestures,
discussions behind secreative palms, with uneasy eyes
keeping a safe distance from the crazy person’s reach.
Troubled for the hour ride, helpless
like wrinkled coondog pups, whimpering desperate appeals after
tossed into the water for their first swim.
Their concern only lasts as long as they’re trapped in a car with me.
Afterwards I’m released, pedaling down
across the railroad tracks, to the faded areas
old shotgun houses and trailers.
The tiny porch and whitewashed trim
sagging baby blue hydrangeas and the blackened fence
where dad set it on fire.
Seems so tiny now, ghost pale and fragile
fragments sifting away in humid breeze,
like whitewashed grains of sand.
