The staff of Woman's Day wouldn’t be so gauche
as to suggest there’s a thin woman inside me
screaming for egress.
Their sumptuous cover cakes
are to be cooked, but never
eaten oneself, communion
given by martyred suburban priestess to loving flock
of orderly children and lawn-worshipping husband.
WD’s perky pink
bullets of diet tips
slay me, but not my inner elegant lady
because she never existed. Ma
femme intérieure a
faim et grand.
I mean, she’s fucking huge, kids.
And she’s not just the one, dear.
Sometimes, she’s Cass, idly slothing through
slick chick magazines whose airbrushed ideals
are science fictional commercials, but the weight
of failed femininity grinds her deep into seat
‘til there’s nothing left of her will but the drive
for endorphic reward, shoveling Twinkies sugar high.
Fried thing, I think I love you.
You
make everything greasy.
But then Bertha busts on through, 400 pounds
of muscled heterosex rampaging Valkyrie dyke
sergeant-shouting about damnation of consumption,
swinging thick elbows and hairy roller derby knees
not at the patriarchy – pricks do as pricks are – but
at the bowtied notion you need more than a cunt,
that a girlish mammal must wax bare as a frog princess,
buy devilish Prada, kiss double-digit lipstick to become
what you always were.
That crazy meat-craving Bertha
is so fucking unfashionable. Sheesh. Nobody
wants
to give her a
conjugal visit. Keep the bitch in
solitary
even if she won’t quit howling in the starving dark.