Contributor: Aaron Levy
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Before I went to the farm, I was fat as fat can be. My friends called me heavy, my parents said I was physically challenged, but the monkey bars told me the truth – you be fat, man. I was five years old and just over 500 lbs., none of it was muscle, but my family took me everywhere like a rabbit’s foot and I loved being out in the public with my bathing suit. I was fat happy, a happy fat and blind fat, fat as fat can be kind of fat.
Like a brand new house, fat as a house I was, a house that had no upstairs cause the fat in my legs had squashed my cartilage so that my knees were just fat bone on fat bone. A house that had only one room, a ranch house with only one room and no uncomfortable corners to stuff away my fat ass. Sometimes you couldn’t see the middle of the room because I was in the way.
Like fat that smiles, smiling giggling saucey-saucying, ignorant fatty fat.
Like the fat guy that is so fat chicks dig him and he squeezes the better part of his fat into a different lovely lady each night except for the Sabbath when he rests because he’s got fatty asthma, so he just rests on a giant chair and replays the week on his widescreen t.v.
And I had so many friends because everybody wants to be around the fat guy of course because the fat guy has the best laugh in the world and my pants were so big that my friends fit in my pockets and they could eat the leftover crumbs, the sugar coated lint, the cans of Spam that were just there. And all my friends and I would talk about going on a big fat diet, but we decided to put it off because we were all so fat together. Always full. Bloated…Happy.
And now, because I went to the Fat Farm, a place where the animals are so skinny they disappear before you can pet them, I am so, so, I am so skinny.
It’s like my mother said it would be, that people are not against you but for themselves. Trust only your thinning family she would say to me over a plate lettuce leaves.
I am skinny like a bone inside another bone inside another bone inside a cartilage.
Skinnier than the popsicle stick on a Weight Watchers fudgical.
Skinnier than the slip of me you just filed under miscellaneous.
Skinnier than a pregnant pause.
I’m so skinny, secrets are telling secrets about me behind my thin back. I’m so skinny, poetry slips through my fingers until only the punctuation sits in my bony palms.
I’m so skinny that I want to call you, my old old friends, but I don’t have the stamina to push all of the buttons.
I’m so thin that my pants look good on me, but my colon paints a different picture.
I used to be fat, fat as a horse, no, fatter than a fat horse that can’t even sleep standing up, and now…the only thing I want is a thick piece of cow, but my stomach is stapled shut and I am lonely.
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Aaron Levy currently teaches creative writing and English Education at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, GA. His award-winning plays have been produced nationally and internationally, and published by Dramatic Publishing and Smith & Kraus. Recently he has had or will have shorter work appear in Eleven Eleven, Black Heart Magazine, The Kennesaw Review, and Apollo's Lyre. You can reach him at alevy2@kennesaw.edu, and soon visit his new website at www.aaronlevy.net.
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Before I went to the farm, I was fat as fat can be. My friends called me heavy, my parents said I was physically challenged, but the monkey bars told me the truth – you be fat, man. I was five years old and just over 500 lbs., none of it was muscle, but my family took me everywhere like a rabbit’s foot and I loved being out in the public with my bathing suit. I was fat happy, a happy fat and blind fat, fat as fat can be kind of fat.
Like a brand new house, fat as a house I was, a house that had no upstairs cause the fat in my legs had squashed my cartilage so that my knees were just fat bone on fat bone. A house that had only one room, a ranch house with only one room and no uncomfortable corners to stuff away my fat ass. Sometimes you couldn’t see the middle of the room because I was in the way.
Like fat that smiles, smiling giggling saucey-saucying, ignorant fatty fat.
Like the fat guy that is so fat chicks dig him and he squeezes the better part of his fat into a different lovely lady each night except for the Sabbath when he rests because he’s got fatty asthma, so he just rests on a giant chair and replays the week on his widescreen t.v.
And I had so many friends because everybody wants to be around the fat guy of course because the fat guy has the best laugh in the world and my pants were so big that my friends fit in my pockets and they could eat the leftover crumbs, the sugar coated lint, the cans of Spam that were just there. And all my friends and I would talk about going on a big fat diet, but we decided to put it off because we were all so fat together. Always full. Bloated…Happy.
And now, because I went to the Fat Farm, a place where the animals are so skinny they disappear before you can pet them, I am so, so, I am so skinny.
It’s like my mother said it would be, that people are not against you but for themselves. Trust only your thinning family she would say to me over a plate lettuce leaves.
I am skinny like a bone inside another bone inside another bone inside a cartilage.
Skinnier than the popsicle stick on a Weight Watchers fudgical.
Skinnier than the slip of me you just filed under miscellaneous.
Skinnier than a pregnant pause.
I’m so skinny, secrets are telling secrets about me behind my thin back. I’m so skinny, poetry slips through my fingers until only the punctuation sits in my bony palms.
I’m so skinny that I want to call you, my old old friends, but I don’t have the stamina to push all of the buttons.
I’m so thin that my pants look good on me, but my colon paints a different picture.
I used to be fat, fat as a horse, no, fatter than a fat horse that can’t even sleep standing up, and now…the only thing I want is a thick piece of cow, but my stomach is stapled shut and I am lonely.
- - -
Aaron Levy currently teaches creative writing and English Education at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, GA. His award-winning plays have been produced nationally and internationally, and published by Dramatic Publishing and Smith & Kraus. Recently he has had or will have shorter work appear in Eleven Eleven, Black Heart Magazine, The Kennesaw Review, and Apollo's Lyre. You can reach him at alevy2@kennesaw.edu, and soon visit his new website at www.aaronlevy.net.
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Author:
Aaron Levy
