20150609 (weight)

My inner child could stand to lose 

Sixty-five pounds. That would put me 

At my early twenties best wearing 

My dark blue three-piece pinstripe

No more explaining the overweight 

My mother taught due to large-bones 

Excusing our family’s massive asses 

Our excess love of comfort food

Our ignorance of good eating.  

In late teens she watched the Depression

Come to life on her street her school her table

You found a nickel on the sidewalk better

Give it to mom than await a walloping

My father’s clan of ten children was worse

At sixteen you got invited to leave

Eldest Tony joined the navy 

Paid for his freedom imprisoned 

The whole war by the Japanese who 

Took the Philippines. His pencil-thin 

Ninety-five pounds came home in ’46

Compared to films of Auschwitz

He looked healthy. My father 

At sixteen took a job manager of a

Corner food store doing everything 

Washing the floor receiving stocking

And for each customer fetching every item 

On their list and gave his wages to his mother  

If ever I pushed food away or asked in disdain

People eat this? I heard again the story 

How the single egg was saved for the father

Who worked. You got a slice of bread 

Smeared with lard and were told to be thankful

Many don’t even have this

Before the clean plate club we heard 

Eyes too big for your stomach? Finish

Starving children in China? No, children

Were still starving in America. For us

The Depression never ended. If somehow

You talked your mom into buying you

A balsa wood model you found your fingers 

Couldn’t build you had wasted two dollars 

A bag of groceries the family wouldn’t have

You cried yourself to sleep that night

Graduating from college I weighed two-twenty 

And had trouble finding a suit. I ended up

With a capacious light green thing I didn’t 

Want but I didn’t like my lumpy body 

Store mirrors made me look at it

This’ll do. Let’s get out of here. One year’s 

Grad school and I weighed one sixty-five

They just knew I was doing drugs. I dropped out

The next fall and built stereo consoles at RCA

Beside rural workers who quit every hunting 

Season and were rehired at its close

At the bottom of the wage scale again

But trained and ready to start over

I looked great at my wedding 

And for a brief while after. Kids, jobs, and 

Striving I lost track of my ever-so-momentarily

Healthy body and ended here having

To weigh, time, and meter so I won’t lose

My sight or a foot or my fingers

When I see others like me 

Obese out of neglect I try to forgive 

Them all including myself 

Life messes you up

c. J.S.Manista, 2015