It’s still National Poetry Month. Here’s something I read recently by Jane Kenyon.
Fat
The doctor says it’s better for my spine
this way-more fat, more estrogen.
Well, then! There was a time when a wife’s
plump shoulders signified prosperity.
These days, my fashionable friends
get by on seaweed milkshakes,
Pall Malls, and vitamin pills. Their clothes
hang elegantly from their clavicles.
As the evening news makes clear
the starving and the besieged maintain
the current standard of beauty without effort.
Whenever two or three gather together
the talk turns dreamily to sausages,
purple cabbages, black beans and rice,
noodles gleaming with cream, yams, and plums,
and chaptai fried in ghee.
