A Poem

[quidditchgrrl]

Sweet vanilla illegal melting into me.
I eat the ice cream for the women in Kabul
  and Kandahar and Mazar-e Sharif.
I eat for Bernice,
the body outlaw,
whe went chunky-dunking in the pool,
making huge waves in the moonlight.
She said, "I'm fat, so?"
I eat for her.
I eat for Priya
on the treadmill at the Sunrise Gym.
who loved her jadhi
because it held her sari up.
I eat for my Moscow translator,
who told me she thought cellulite
was anticommunist
and she loved her pure Russian fat.
I eat for Helen Gurley Brown
that she will let herself be.
I eat for Nina and her lost breasts.
I eat for Carmen and her dreaded spread.
I eat with Sunita
there in the back of the Afghan restaurant.
I eat and swallow it down.
To keep the pleasure,
to keep the future alive,
I eat for all of them.
I eat for my partner
that I may be open rather than
  hard.
I eat for my mother,
I eat for me.
Soft belly,
merciful belly,
receive, please.
Let the fat sweet sugary wet
enter and encompass me.
Let me not be afraid of my fullness,
let me not be afraid to be seen.
Maybe being good isn't about getting rid of
  anything.
Maybe good has to do with living in the
  mess.
in the moment
in the ice cream
in the frailty
in the failures
in the flaws.
Maybe what I tried to get rid of is the
goodest part of me.
Think Passion.
Think Fat.
Think Age.
Think Round.
Maybe good is about developing the capacity
to live fully inside everything.
Our body is our country,
the only city,
the only village,
the only every
we will ever know.

Rome, Kabul, San Francisco, Los Angeles,
  Mumbai, Puerto Rico, Nairobi, New York

Our body is the carrier of the stories
of the world
of the earth
of the mother.
Our body is the mother.
Our body came from Mother.
Our body is our home.
We are crying here.
We are found.
We are women.
We are too much.
We are empty.
We are full.
We live in a good body.
We live in the good body.
Good body
good body
good body.

Comments

[didi75.livejournal.com]

More reasons to eat ice cream, my favorite dessert in the whole world.

So I posted two happy trail icons in my LJ. It's a little hard to see the yummy goodness, but I hope they still make you feel a bit better. And I don't need anything in return, unless of course it's theraputic for you! Trio love is always good.

[authenticjoy.livejournal.com]

That's wonderful! Thank you for posting it. Well my round from age and scarred from surgery belly thanks you. My sweet tooth thanks you too.

It's funny, not a hundred years ago there were massive problems with food storage and we've licked most of them. We had a good chunk of our own population going to bed hungry at night not fifty years ago. We gobbled that problem down.

Now we need to tackle the world. I like the idea of no guilt because the world should be so lucky.

I'm adding this to my memories.