Hymn of a Fat Woman

 

All of the saints starved themselves.

Not a single fat one.

The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same

Latin root.

 

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones

or shards of stained

glass or Christ carved

on his cross.

 

Hard

as pew seats. Brittle

as hair shirts. Women

made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted

wooden chest. Women consumed

by fervor.

 

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast

down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.

They must have slipped with ease through the eye

of the needle, leaving the weighty

camels stranded at the city gate.

 

Within that spare city’s walls,

I do not think I would find anyone like me.

 

I imagine I will find my kind outside

lolling in the garden

munching on the apples.

 

Joyce Huff, Project 180, Poem 094, February 04, 2021