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Best Poems - Dieting
Best Poems – DIETING
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The Fat Ladies Sing – Felicia Nimue Ackerman “We revel in our candy bars
And cookies, cake and pie.
That vegetables taste wonderful
Is one humongous lie.
But now we face admonishment.
Our size sets off a fuss.
The war against obesity
Includes a war on us.
We know our girth is plentiful,
But listen to our voice.
When thinking of our corpulence,
Why can’t you be pro-choice?” |
I Watched Myself Dance – Jessica McCormick “I watched myself dance for the first time yesterday,
and nothing could have prepared me.
In the video was not me
but a flabby, fatty girl shaking it.
I watched myself move for the first time yesterday,
and she was smiling because she thought she looked good.
Her smile—pop!—erased now,
replaced now with desire to sweat until the image was gone.
I watched myself dance for the last time yesterday,
vowed to make this the ‘before’ video I would show people one day.
I couldn’t stop staring at the giant belly and thighs.
Is this what everyone sees?
Here’s what I saw:
Sweat shining proudly off my too-big forehead;
call it a fivehead.
Stringy hair plastered like wallpaper to my chubby face;
call it progress.
A hundred-watt smile glued onto my mouth;
call it ignorance.
Pale round stomach jiggling, center-stage;
call it shame.
Grown hips shaking madly, trying to catch up to the beat;
call it earthquake.
Flat feet like boulders that can’t remember anything;
call it desolation.
I watched myself dance for the first time yesterday,
planning to share the video with my new-to-health-too sister,
Instead I locked my phone but didn’t delete it.
I went to the mirror and tried to reconcile myself with myself.”
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The Wife of Carcassone – A.G. Prys-Jones “There was a man of Carcassone
Who put his buxom wife upon
A diet whereon lunch and dinner
Did not appear: so she grew thinner,
As thin, in fact, as any lath.
And one sad evening, in her bath
She slipped and slithered down the vent
Calling her husband as she went.
But he, alas, not understanding,
Stood wavering upon the landing,
Until a final gurgling noise
Disturbed his normal equipoise.
Then rushing round in fierce despair
He tried to find her everywhere.
He tapped the pipes, and then at once
Called down the sinks, without response:
He even dug the garden drain
And pushed the whole thing back again.
But nothing was the slightest use.
For she, now well adown the sluice
Beyond the clay beds and the gravel
Without the vestige of apparel
But with an undulating motion,
Was heading swiftly for the ocean.
So nothing obvious could be done
For that poor wife of Carcassone.
Her husband, in strong sorrow pent,
Then knew he should have been content
To love her as the Lord had built her:
(Or fitted some safe bathroom filter
To meet the needs of her condition
As well he might, in his position.)
So now upon his lone veranda
He sits and muses on Miranda,
A charming wife whose tragic slimming
Was not offset by skill in swimming.” |
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Mexico City Blues (104th Chorus) – Jack Kerouac “I’d rather be thin than famous,
I dont wanta be fat,
And a woman throws me outa bed
Callin me Gordo, & everytime
I bend
to pickup
my suspenders
from the davenport
floor I explode
loud huge grunt-o
and disgust
every one
in the familio
I’d rather be thin than famous
But I’m fat
Paste that in yr. Broadway Show” |
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Very Dietary – Henry Sambrooke Leigh
“If you wish to grow thinner, diminish your dinner,
And take to light claret instead of pale ale;
Look down with an utter contempt upon butter,
And never touch bread till it’s toasted—or stale.” |
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