I Blame Fashion Magazines For This by Diane Bracuk

I Blame Fashion Magazines For This

My body is not good enough

for love today. It puffs like an adder

poisoned with disgust at gaining

five pounds in all the wrong places.

I am a cubist sculpture slapped together

with blobs of Playdoh, and so what

if I can still fit into a size eight?

He is the one who will suffer for this

as I pull in my sails, refusing to venture into

the hot, humid pleasure zones

where ego dissolves.

My thighs become the new furniture

in an immigrant household covered in plastic,

no, you can’t sit here, take your hands off there!

Love will be rationed as I strive

to lose the five pounds no one else can see.

Wrapped like a mummy in my intention,

I am dead to all passion,

Awaiting rebirth in a body I would desire

If I were him.

Diane Bracuk is an award-winning Toronto writer whose work has appeared in leading literary journals, including DarkWinter Literary Magazine.. Her story “Doughnut Eaters” won the PRISM international creative non-fiction award. Her short story collection Middle-Aged Boys & Girls, was nominated for for the Ontario Library Association (OLA) Evergreen Award.