By SJ Griffin

Every fat person will tell you that no one has been there for them like food has. Not my girlfriend, my dog, or even my mom compares to what I feel with food. But there’s loathing in that relationship too. I moan pleasure and pain into each bite I take. Every time I eat, I either say “I love myself” or “I hate myself,” but I always feel both.

In the era of body positivity and PC culture, I have an idea what “healthy society” thinks of fat people, but they’re afraid to say it. They think we’re lazy, excuse-making, energy-depleting whiny asses who are secretly jealous of skinny people. We stuff our faces with frozen pizza and McDonald’s French fries and all things gloriously easy and American. We like to use our tragic pasts and sob stories to excuse our slovenly ways, while taking up space and energy on a quickly dying Earth.

Here’s something worse than healthy society can imagine: what I really put my body through. I am constantly destroying my body. I’ll starve myself the whole day so I can pig out at night, stuffing my stomach until the acid reflux floods up my gullet. I love eating until the feast is over, when I’m bent over, praying for death because my stomach hurts so much, when I’m lying in bed while my girlfriend rubs my swollen tummy in clockwise circles.

But in the age of body positivity, I have to love—no adore—my body through it all. If I don’t, then I’m fat shaming myself. I’ve had friends lie to me. “You are not fat,” they say, “You’re beautiful.” (Hey, fat people, you can be both.) I’ve had friends slap me (hard) when I called myself fat, like it was a bit for a sitcom. When I complain about my thunder-blubber thighs ripping the inseams of my jeans again, those friends bark “shut the fuck up.”

I am jealous that skinny people can walk in a store and find their size in anything. I’m jealous that they can drive through the Walmart parking lot without being called a “fat fuck” by a bunch of guys carrying six packs. I’m jealous that they can ignore that guy in the corner of the classroom who ironically called me (the only fat person in the room) “scary fat” while our class analyzed Hunger by Roxane Gay.

Why should I take verbal beatings from my enemies and my friends?

Since weight is considered a medical concern, many people say I should trust my doctor’s opinion. Surely a medical practitioner who has sworn to “do no harm” must be completely logical and unbiased about this sort of thing, right?

When the doctor enters the examination room, she glances at me, then back to her clipboard, then asks, “Why are you here?”

“I need to have my prescription refilled,” I say. “Metformin.”

“Were you taking that for diabetes?” she says.

Her eyes don’t move from her clipboard.

“No,” I say. “PCOS.”

“Ah,” she says, finally looking up. “I figured you must have something like that.”

I don’t ask because I know the signs of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, or PCOS: facial hair, rough skin, excess body hair, thinning hair on the head, mood swings, headaches, fatigue. This doctor couldn’t have noticed all of those from a half-second glance. But I must have something to explain my fatness.

The doctor tells me I need to exercise and lose weight as she sticks her hand up my vagina for a pap smear. I can’t help but take it personally when she’s got her whole head up inside my most private, holy area—when I already feel as uncomfortable as she can possibly make me—and she tells me I’m not good enough.

I simply nod every time the doctor says I can lose “the weight,” as if it’s a separate entity I can just leave behind, like it hasn’t consumed my whole life.

I didn’t know I was the biggest person in my kindergarten class until my crush slapped the “fat” insult into my chubby cheeks, like red stamps that said “worth” on one cheek and “less” on the other. I never thought about my weight until then, but after that moment, the glass bubble shattered.

I had appointments with nutritionists, I couldn’t fit in the school uniforms, I couldn’t do the same things my friends did (PE was a nightmare). Middle school and high school were the worst. I never got a date, never got asked to dance (although that’s partly because I’m queer). The whole middle school mocked me for months after I was publicly “rejected” by a boy I didn’t even like because a rumor spread that I did. Apparently, they felt I had to be punished for thinking a fat person could find love.

I still feel inadequate. My girlfriend has to constantly assure me that she finds me physically attractive, though I shouldn’t have to count such validation toward my self-worth. Sometimes, when I masturbate or have sex, I suck in my stomach and pretend I’m skinny just to feel pretty enough, to feel good.

The anti-fat-shaming culture was founded by fat people, most significantly fat Black women, reclaiming pride in their bodies, but now it’s “cool” for skinny PC people to appropriate the movement without upholding its tenets. Society isn’t changing as much as it seems to be on Twitter and Instagram.

I’d like the privacy to explore my own fat-shaming and the damage that has been done to my body without thinner people telling me how I should feel about myself.

About the Writer:
SJ Griffin (they/them) is a queer, trans, fat writer and editor based in North Carolina. They have a BA in psychology, BFA in creative writing, and certificate in publishing from UNC-Wilmington. You can find more of their work in Motherwell, Crab Fat Magazine, Semicolon Literary Journal, Mookychick, Marias at Sampaguitas, and more. Find them on Twitter @born2blossom.

Looking down

By Austin Metze

Leaning in over the swamp’s edge
I’m drawn to an anomaly—
intensely dark pulsing water,
like an oil spill in the shape of an archipelago;
Long Island viewed from 10,000 feet,
early morning commuters beginning to stir.

A mass of frog embryos,
having just crossed over into life,
embrace each other in an inky mass,
then break out blindly like bumper cars
rhythmically waving spermy tails.

Nearby, rafts of eggs float looking up
with dazed black-yoked eyes
cast blindly to the heavens.

The mother to this life spill
sits by my feet,
a Buddha frog
in contemplation of her creation,
witness to galactic birth.

I’ve been looking down a lot, at
floating islands of pale blue flowers,
stone snapshots of river flow—
I’m starting to see down and up
as different versions of themselves. . .
but who is watching me?
Certainly not the frogs.
Birds show little interest,
practicing avoidance with both eyes.
They think that I can’t fly

After a rain

By Austin Metze

After a rain
the world stands in place,
sedated by its presence—
it’s holy water
that falls upon us.
There is no other kind.

To a fallen tree

By Austin Metze

What do you miss most about standing tall?

Feeling lofty

My shadow stretched before me
it’s changing lengths from west to east

The shape of limbs I sense but cannot see

My leaves giving sound to the wind

Taking a long slow drink after a summer rain

Is there anything good about lying on the earth?

Yes, returning to my roots

About the Writer:
Austin Metze is a poet, essayist, painter, and book designer. His work has been published in Weeklings Literary Journal and Tiny Seed Literary Journal. He has self-published three chapbooks: Crow’s Blood, Hudson Street, and I Tried To Show My Dog The Stars, as well as a book of essays, When Life Calls You Out, It’s Usually Onto A Highway.

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By Amber Pierson

About the Writer:
“My Bones Are Blue” is emerging writer Amber Pierson’s fourth published poem. Her goal as a poet is to write poems that inspire unique images and that twist emotions into something new and unexpected. Amber lives and writes in Cortland, New York.

By Pat LaPointe

Before every holiday, we’d have what my family called the “boob hunt.” Sounds perverse, but it’s not. It was all about my mom’s famous fried chicken.

Mom believed every holiday should include a dish that celebrated our heritage. While we appreciated the concept, it took the us years to convince her that the Pilgrims didn’t serve lasagna at the first Thanksgiving. With her special fried chicken, she found a way to make the classic Southern dish into something consistent with our ethnic heritage by adding Italian-seasoned breadcrumbs.

A typical boob hunt started with Mom sending Dad out to shop for chicken breasts. Now we’re not talking about just any breasts. Mom specified that she wanted only “Dolly Parton” breasts, not “Twiggy” ones. Dad would often have to shop at several grocery stores before he’d find 24 perfect breasts that would satisfy her requirements.

In his later years, when Dad could no longer drive, I became his boob-hunt partner. We’d check the poultry in each store and quietly (we hoped) comment on whether the breasts were Dolly enough. Of course, Mom was the final decision maker. Any breasts she deemed too small were sent to the freezer and Dad and I went out again.

On the morning of the holiday, Mom always woke at dawn. She would fill three or four bowls with milk and eggs, in which she’d soak her chosen Dollies. After a few hours, she would spread waxed paper on the table and cover it with Italian breadcrumbs. Then she would coat the breasts and arrange them neatly on the sheets of waxed paper until they were ready to fry.

My sister JoAnn and I were in charge of preparing the side dishes: mashed potatoes that Mom insisted must have globs of melting butter on top, sweet potatoes with extra marshmallows, and bowls of buttery corn.

Mom’s kitchen was small, and she wasn’t the neatest cook. Knowing that, JoAnn and I added our own secret tradition to the chicken-frying ritual. On the morning of each holiday, one of us would call the other.

“Have you got your socks?” one sister would ask, on the verge of laughing.

“Wouldn’t go without them,” the other sister would respond, unable to keep from giggling.

By the time JoAnn and I arrived, the whole house smelled like Colonel Sanders’s Italian cousin had moved in. Mom would have chicken frying in several pans, with oil squirting and splattering everywhere. Breadcrumbs fell onto the greasy floor, building a layer of uniquely slippery footing. My sister and I skated around the kitchen creating what we called our “breaded socks” as we slid through the crumbs and grease.  As Mom aged and became more careless in her chicken preparation, there would be actual footprints on a breadcrumb-and-oil “rug” on the floor.

Mom’s gone now. My middle-aged siblings and I, concerned about fats and cholesterol, choose baked chicken breasts that are more Twiggy than Dolly for our holiday dinners. The amount of butter in the potatoes has dropped drastically, the sweet potatoes are often served without marshmallows, and buttery corn has been replaced by green salad.

We congratulate ourselves for making healthy choices, but when we sit down for dinner, we all wish for one more holiday with Mom, her Dollies, and our breaded socks.

About the Writer:
Pat LaPointe is the editor of Changes in Life, a monthly online women’s newsletter. She is also a contributing editor to the anthology The Woman I’ve Become: 37 Women Share Their Journeys from Toxic Relationships to Self-Empowerment. She has counseled victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence. Pat is past president of Story Circle Network and she conducts writing workshops for women online and onsite. Her essays and short stories have been published widely and she is currently completing her first novel (forthcoming in late 2021).

By Erin Hall

I come to you when I visit home. I press my index and middle fingers into my lips, and gently touch them against the smooth marble edge. I tell you about the traffic—so many idiots in the left lane, it would have driven you mad—and trace my fingers, sticky from my lip gloss, along the etching.

I wonder if mom notices, but I’m careful. I angle the armoire door just as she always leaves it—slightly, but thoughtfully, open—as if that door was the barrier instead of time.

Stepping onto the patio, I see you outside, sweeping the pool vacuum in melodic, almost therapeutic, strokes up and down the pool’s curved walls, stopping only to slide the loose cuffs of your sweatshirt up your sun-drenched arms.

You’re folded headfirst into the boat’s engine hatch, your legs twitching against the taut, ashen leather of the bench seat, the sharp clang of your tools against the metal hull echoing up the hill.

You’re seated quietly on the deck, legs outstretched on the chair, tasting deep breaths of humid air and sips of iced tea as you survey the backyard with worry drifting far from your shoulders.

I stand there watching, the sounds of summer rising as a choir around you—the soft lap of water against the seawall after a boat cuts the canal, the low groan of its motor lingering, the hum of a mower as a neighbor grooms their yard, and birds whistling into the breeze.

I wiggle my toes against the brick, delighting in the coarseness and warmth from the afternoon sun, and I open my eyes.

The skimmer mounts the pool steps and gurgles, spitting water onto the pavement. The boat hoist is empty—a mass of seaweed, driftwood and trash nesting between the bunks like a heavy, tangled memory. The chair is gone. The iced tea is in the fridge. And you are upstairs, in the armoire, in the marble box.

About the Writer:
Erin Hall is a writer and communications professional in Royal Oak, Michigan. She’s been hard at the public relations grind for nearly 15 years, but has always considered herself a writer first—ever since she scribbled short stories under the lamp on her childhood nightstand at all hours. She previously wrote for her hometown newspaper, Michigan State University’s (now defunct) Big Green Magazine and Chicago Now’s blog network; she has been recently been published in the Detroit Metro Times. You can find some of her personal musings at www.arkedgirl.com.

By Maria Smith

Eight pairs of jeans became a source of mental agony for me when I moved from Colorado Springs to South Carolina in 2016. I got fixated on the idea that I needed to fit into a certain size, and I obsessed about it, especially once I could no longer fit into my four pairs of expensive Lucky Brand™ jeans.

The first year I lived in South Carolina, all eight pairs fit, but by my second and third year there, the jeans began making their way from the velvet hangers on the low rack—where I keep all the clothes I wear most often—to the top shelf of my closet. I put the Lucky jeans in one pile and the remaining jeans in a second pile. Every time I was in the closet and looked up, I’d sigh with exasperation. I blamed the problem on the stress of living in the South. My husband and I moved here to be closer to my mom, to make up for all the years we lived far away from her—but I never liked heat and humidity.

By our fourth year in South Carolina, all eight pairs were neatly folded and both piles were stacked together up high in the top shelf of the closet. Every so often, I’d take them down and wonder if I should try them on.

“Should I hang onto them?” I’d ask my husband. I always followed that question with a second one: “Do you think I’ll ever fit in these jeans again?”

My husband would always shake his head and say, “I’m not answering. It’s suicide for a husband to talk about his wife’s weight.”

“Wise man,” I’d mutter underneath my breath.

I admit I got hung up on a few pounds, but I’m four feet and ten inches tall. Three to five pounds might not seem like much, but on a petite woman like me it feels uncomfortable.

It took me the full four years to get somewhat comfortable living in the South. Then, two months ago, I received a phone call on a Sunday morning that my mom had passed away in a tragic car accident. I never got to see her body. I didn’t get to say goodbye.

Sadly, that’s what it took for me to stop obsessing about my precious jean collection. I tried them on one more time, but nothing had changed. I still couldn’t zip them up. This time, though, I  threw all those jeans into a black trash bag. The next day, I tossed the bag into the trunk of my car, determined to donate them as quickly as possible.

I gave all eight pairs of jeans to the thrift store of the Palmetto Animal League, a local animal shelter. Bringing them there filled me with overwhelming gratitude. Helping out animals in need by giving up something so material helped me see that, in the grand scheme of things and in my life, those jean were irrelevant.

In the end, I realized the emotional growth fits me far better than the jeans ever would have.

About the Writer:
Maria Smith is an aspiring writer and artist who spent 16 years serving as an officer in the Air Force Reserve, where she achieved the rank of Major. After being honorably discharged due to illness in 2010, she enrolled in the University of the Rockies in Colorado Springs, CO, completing her doctorate in psychology in March 2014. She earned her MFA from Bay Path University’s Creative Nonfiction Writing program in July 2019. Maria is originally from western Massachusetts; she currently lives in Bluffton, South Carolina with her husband, Terry.

A Love Letter from Hospital

By Sandeep Kumar Mishra

Hospitals are ideograms of truth
where death has no false tint of life—
pukka pain, pink anguish, but stained hope.
You might see Hoag’s a galaxy
within a galaxy within a galaxy. . .
Once we enter here it seems a black hole,
As if the end of the world, but
one patient, like a phoenix, obtains
new life by rising from the ashes
while another dies in a show of
flames and a combustion of malady

The white wall only once smelled
deserts its petroleum daughter
as we loose our own aroma,
the one we put on every morning,
into this bouquet of different
essences of drugs, syrup, Dettol
or antiseptic with some
of the odorless bones and meat

The ill, so woebegone in their sojourns,
are so true pale blue.
You could not but be brave when you see
these patients, with the patience of the Spartan school,
prove the man is greater than his pain—
You would be a great philosopher,
the first to laugh but the last to complain,
once you came out of the hospital,
where the surgical folk who, though mortals, never see
themselves in that line, are a cheerful green, and
They, with fear and hope in the form of dream,
add a little love potion to every prescription

Someone soulful comes to meet them
and hold one of their hands. At once,
you feel house keys in your hand,
but here no heart is bypassed by love.
When you hug them, their ribs make
a room for your fleshy abdomen,
as you sense the titanic waterfall
of their hearts slowly sinking

When you come to this place,
try to avoid any mirror or self-reflection.
You won’t see the things you usually see—
but your purged soul will peep out of body fabric
like sunlight coming out of a barred window.
You can no longer balance petty yourself,
as the inner burden will be more than your body weight

Let us praise these insomniac beds!
Let us praise the fans that don’t adjust,
praise the room service that doesn’t exist.
Let us praise the hospital staff—
they are angels without wings—
covering under fake masks of joy
they find expired lungs and tired hearts
lying in their paths every day.
They play poker with their lives
in this game with virus and ailment,
as they foster death for other passive parties too

Corona-Vorona, Days-Ways

By Sandeep Kumar Mishra

The humanity is caving in slow corona motion
I, like a sea mouse back to my hidey-hole,
Set an alarm every morn, lay in bed to ignore it—
I stay for what seems like minutes but becomes hours—
Week and weeks in hibernation. Am I a little lonely bear?

Sometimes I feel homesick in my home and
think I’m put in a home jail for not having corona.
It feels like a creepy clown chasing me
or I am being cornered by zombies.
I work from green home but the world is in the red zone

As I log on for socializing and switch on to remote voice
Are vectors we all or postcodes alike?
My body robots repeat eat, sleep, eat—
Is breakfast still breakfast if I have it at 12?
Is dinner still dinner if I have cookies for tea?

Now this thing is nonfiction—health vs. economy.
The virus does not care
for the digits in your bank account
or your total assets or the GDP,
And even the fiction is dark, but there’s still music

The relentless race of traffic and people
has been turned into marathon of conscious breath,
Shopping has become tracking down others’ health,
Sanitizer in the pockets, wearing face masks—
Sneezing is new way to attract attention,
Corona warriors on the front line,
but some people still curse and cry

I blink my eyes, focusing on the horizon
as if concentration itself will transport me to another place.
Did I just see a butterfly land in that flower?
When kookaburras cackle flying over empty streets
When the crickets’ chirp sounds alone,
Do they know what is happening to us?
Am I noticing more than I did before?

The lungs feel clear, birds have replaced planes,
We venture out of the house to the garden and back in again—
it’s made all of us hermits.
The sky is blue now, or is it just me?
Now I understand less means more

COVID-19 is a hydra-headed challenger
to our modern modality to wake up
buying cheap tack from cheap labor,
I wonder why I feel a sense of guilt
when I see others suffering while I am not,
But I am now getting used to my pyjamas

About the Writer:
Sandeep Kumar Mishra is an outsider artist, poet and lecturer in English Literature and Political Science, and he is the art instructor at Kishlaya Outsider Art Academy. He edited Pearls (2002), a collection of poems by various poets, and he wrote the professional guidebook How to Become a Teacher in Australia and New Zealand: A Complete and Authentic Guide (2016). An original collection of his poetry, One Heart, Many Breaks was published by Indian Poetry Press in August 2020. His website is www.sandeepkumarmishra.com.

By Van Lanigh

From the Photographer:

Inspired by great masters such as Vrubel and Monet, Van Lanigh creates figurative and landscape pieces. Her unique style is a reaction to abstractionism, an attempt to capture surrealistic yet casual reality.

The series “Chasing Rainbows” is about the perception of the world of feelings. No one feels exactly one emotion at a time—it’s always a crazy waterfall with undertones of sensations. She interprets this rainbow of feelings in her works by running away from the real world of colors to the imaginary universe of impressions.

Sharing artwork is part of her response to the current world situation. “Instead of total isolation,” she says, “let’s keep in touch (in the safest way possible). Although the Internet nowadays may be complicated and overwhelming, let’s use it for roaming around this Brave New Digital World. Somehow we have to rebuild our identities using all these digital profiles and the mediums available to us to continue with social interaction. It’s the only possible way now.”

Chasing Rainbows

About the Photographer:
Artist Van Lanigh’s artwork uses new forms and materials to achieve resonance between the visual effect and message of the each piece. One of her recent experiments involves transitioning Pointillism into 3-D space by making a series of human-face sculptures with small, colorful handcrafted, polymer clay balls. She attended St. Petersburg State Budget Educational Institution of Additional Education “Art School № 3,” and her work is exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. She is based in Haarlem, Nord Holland , Netherlands.

When I Was a Hunter Gatherer

By Jane Yolen

in the deep cleft of Nature,
watching the stalk of bobcat,
the instant whirr of hummingbird,
the snake-cut grasses,

fear did not rise up
like a clog in my throat
but in cautious passion,
the kind that makes one stay,
observe,
listen
attend,
fill with wonder,
love—

as I have done
from the moment we met again,
in the old growth forest
of our lives.

The Spin, The Spine

By Jane Yolen

Woman’s work, spinning,
sewing, that spine of family,
that stitch in the time
of a marriage, that snip-snap
of life beginning, life ending.
We do not need a dictionary
to thread that history.
Look at our fingers, our hands,
made for the work, our tongues
glistening on the twist of flax.
We work through hurt, through tears,
through ache, through birth.
We weep, we steep,
we hope, we grow.
Don’t preach, brother,
what we already know.
We are what we sew.

The Quiet House

By Jane Yolen

For once it is quiet here,
no phones ringing to offer me
things I do not want,
have never wanted;
no doors slamming
as tradesmen walk in and out
with paint pots, ladders.
My fingers clattering
on what are supposed to be
silent keys, and you—old man,
beloved found object,
asleep upstairs.
I will not wake you to tear
a hole in this silence
even though your breathing
is the only sound
I really want to hear.

About the Writer:
Jane Yolen has written nearly 400 books, including The Devil’s Arithmetic, the Commander Toad series, Twelve Impossible Things to Do Before Breakfast, the History Mystery series, the Young Merlin Trilogy, White Jenna, the Pit Dragon Trilogy, Pirates in Petticoats, and her most recent book, Miriam at the River. In 1988 she won the Caldecott Medal for Owl Moon; The Emperor and the Kite was a Caldecott Honor Book in 1968. She has been named a finalist for a Nebula Award five times and has won that honor twice, earning Best Short Story for Sister Emily’s Lightship in 1997 and Best Novelette for Lost Girls in 1998. Her books have won Golden Kite Awards, the Sydney Taylor Jewish Council Awards, the Christopher Medal, the California Young Reader Medal, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, the Massachusetts YA Book Award, and a National Outdoor Book Award. She was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2010 World Fantasy Awards and in 2016 she was named a Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Jane is a graduate of Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She resides in Hatfield, Massachusetts and St. Andrews, Scotland.

By Cindy Phan

From the Photographer:

These eryngos flowers were captured on Nikon D5500 digital SLR with 18-55 mm lens at Bellevue Botanical Garden in Washington state during springtime. Natural lighting was used and very minimal editing was done.

Bellevue Botanical Garden

About the Photographer:
Cindy Phan is an ice skater, inline skater, and outdoor adventurer. She prides herself in being that one friend you’ll never get bored around; she’s full of ideas and always tries to get people out of their comfort zone. Photography, horror, heavy metal, wine, and animals are a few of Cindy’s interests, which are ever-expanding because she literally aspires to do everything. Cindy’s only fears in life are losing the people she loves and leaving this world without satisfying all her curiosities.