A Poem That’s About Nature and Fatness
No one shames a pond for being too wide.
“All you do is sit around all day reflecting.
You need to move around. Get your water flowing.
Be more active like your cousin, the river, it runs every day.”
No one tells a field of wildflowers it should wear black
because it’s slimming or that it should stay away from bright
colors or that those petal patterns it displays make it look fat.
“Oh, what a shame because you have such a pretty face.”
No one tries to belittle a tree for having a thick trunk.
They don’t snatch fruit from its broad branches saying,
“You’ve had enough already” or “I’m just trying to help.”
It’s a fucking tree. It has willpower and the rings to prove it.
Our fatness is natural, yet it’s often judged, not unlike clouds.
When dark, low, and tempestuous, people shake their heads.
When light, bright, and fluffy, people smile at it, amused.
Whether it blankets the sky or is nowhere to be found,
Our fatness is as natural as
a cloud,
a pond,
a field,
of wild
flowers
and, yes,
even a tree.
RONNIE OCANA BRENES
MIGUEL M. MORALES
grew up working as a migrant/seasonal farmworker. He now works in a library, filling his day with students and words but mostly clearing paper jams. Miguel’s fat writings appear in Hibernation and other Poems by Bear Bards, Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzalduan Borderlands, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, and in Brian Kornell’s limited essay series Fat and Queer, Queen Mob’s Teahouse. You can find Miguel as @TrustMiguel on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.