Glory be to God for dimpled thighs,
For bellies rounding out like ships in sail;
For nipples of all colors upon breasts that swell;
Scars, stretch marks and incisions; glistening hair;
Bodies rounded and soft–fold, hollow, and curve;
And all shapes, the square, the luscious, the trim.

All things counter, original, queer, strange;
Whatever is wobbly or strengthened (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; strong, tired, able or less so;
We live in our bodies whose beauty is past change;
Praise them.

Someone oughta put an anthology together.

What I know about poetry could fit in a baby donut hole, so I doubt I’ve anything to contribute. Song lyric parodies are more my thing.

Epidemic of obesity
has now produced-
headlessity.

is only rivaled by:

But-headless-too-
like Dad and Mom-
Someone do a Telethon

Do the headless fatties wed?
Do they Do It in the bed?
Yet how do the headless fatties see
since-
obviously-
headless fatties headless be.

And if they manage- somehow- to mate
Do they intend to procreate?
What law can form to stop this trend
What lurking doom doth this portend?

The offspring emerges-appalling creature
with living fatty body features
But-headless-too-
like Dad and Mom-
Someone do a Telethon
to get the headless babies hats-
cover stumps with knitted caps-

Write The Star, tell the Inquirer
health care costs are getting higher
First item blares out on the local news-
Epidemic of obesity
has now produced-
headlessity.

More applause
With hoots & guffaws!

Ya’ll have been goin’ to town. Love the wrap-up of laurel’s doctor poem. And this line—

Fuck anyone whom this disappoints — A Sarah

— superb. It has all the offhand “be gone!” ‘tude, yet still the care/propriety of the “m” on the “whom.”

O, to live a life whose memoir could rightly take that line as its title.

KILLING THE BODY

Here it comes lurching,
in wreck and ruin–
yet another poem
featuring Woman versus Body.
We are legion,
us would-be murderers.

Maybe we’re born with such urges:
comets of breath bewildered
by the sudden weight of form–
salt and heart, liver and tongue.
Perhaps we never got over
the stark shock of spines and teeth,
eyelids and ovaries;
it was all too much at once.

Perhaps it’s a bloodlust
we’re conditioned to:
oh the pleasure laced with shame
as we’re taught to take our licks and like it:
Kiss the knife. Pare off all excess.
Curl in like an apple peel.
Now cut
every last yearning
cell of the holy from your core.
Good girl
razor hipped. Clavicle forward
show us
your breakables.

I’ve got a drawer full of tricks
for banishing a body,
poisons made of chastity and charity,
vials of pestilence and virtue,
and I have drank them each,
night by empty night.
But it’s been said, and I believe it,
that the body is a damn hard thing to kill.

It’s been said that anorexics
only seek enlightenment. It’s been said:
you can heal your life.
It’s all been said–every single goddamned thing
about the whole sad story.
There’s nothing left to do
but lift
vial to mouth, and drink.

-Kristen McHenry

And on a lighter note:

THE DAY MS. MORRY LET HERSELF GO

What they all said would happen finally did
on the day Ms. Morry let herself go.
She whirled down to breakfast in her robe–
trim Ms. Morry who had always forbid
herself sweets, either corn-based or dough,
devoured a sticky roll the size of a globe

and washed it down with a champagne toast,
then made the most shocking announcement:
From now on, she would no longer diet,
keep tight the taut, and stay flat as a ghost.
she’d stop weigh-ins and state her renouncement
of restraint and restriction, and riot

loud in the streets; her corpulent belly
breaching the top her Brooks Brothers slacks.
she would refuse to be miserably wed
to the gym; for her true love was jelly.
She’d eat out straight out of bags salt-laden snacks,
and move only for cake and well-buttered bread.

She would finally, truly let herself go!
With that she went waddling across the lawn,
her flesh surging due to lack of purging.
When last seen, Ms. Morry had a fresh glow
and a tattoo of a beautiful swan–
its smile and her lush stomach merging.

–Kristen McHenry

(“Shakespeare dead? Poor old Bill! Why I never knew the poor fellow was ill!” – and if someone hooks up a cable to his tomb, I’m sure I’d be powering Stratford for a while).