WRITER’S CRAMP
I sat down to write you a poem ’bout fitness;
’Bout murdering victims without any witness;
’Bout barbells, and skip ropes, and good things for killing
With violence and grimness and every scene chilling.
I thought about weights coming down with a crash
For reasons like jealousy, revenge and cash.
I thought about drugs that induced heart attacks
In people on treadmills pushed up to the max.
I thought about diving and some broken necks.
I thought about poisons and causing car wrecks.
I thought about joggers who fell over cliffs,
And how muscle builders look better as stiffs.
So I sat in my chair and I thought quite a bit
About how many people would die to be fit.
My muscle was hurting; I pushed much too deep.
Never wrote you that poem—my brain fell asleep.
JOY HEWITT MANN has been published coast to coast. In 2001, she placed first in poetry from the Cambridge Writers Collective. In 2000, she was the winner of the Acorn-Rukheyser Award for her chapbook Grass. Her first short story collection, Clinging to Water, was published in 2000, and her first full-length poetry collection, Bone on Bone, is scheduled for publication in 2003. She also has a novel, Lacrima Christi, coming out in 2002.
DOWN IN THE PLUMPS
VICTORIA MAFFINI
The last straw was at the 7-Eleven. With an already opened bag of Doritos in the crook of my arm, I flipped to the “Do’s and Don’ts” on the back page of Glamour magazine. I was snickering at the too-short skirts and noticeable panty lines when a chubby figure under the caption “Anyone for a sausage roll?” sent a flicker of recognition through my brain. I have a skirt like that, but it looks much better on…the little black strip over the face had served its purpose until that point. My stomach dropped into my shoes. The chunky girl billowing out over the waistband of her skirt, squeezed into a tank top, was me walking in Soho with my uncle. I’d gone to visit him in New York for a week. He looked fabulous. I, however, seemed to be both bending and twisting, creating a sea of fat waves and three extra chins.
Panic.
I scrambled to snatch up all the copies left in the 7-Eleven. Sweat stung my forehead. I tried to keep my voice from quavering. “I’ll take these.” I plunked down the half-eaten bag of chips and twelve magazines.
“These are all the same, you know,” the petite blonde girl behind the counter chirped.
I swiped at the sweat on my face with a grungy sleeve. She knows it’s me. She’s read the magazine. I became acutely aware of the fact her thighs and my upper arms were the same size.
“Yeah, my friend is in one of the fashion shoots.” Any attempt at flippancy was sabotaged by the three-octave hike in my voice.
For what seemed an eternity, the girl, whose nametag labelled her Cheri, snapped her gum and stared at me. “Whatever.”
Half an hour later I slumped onto my couch, exhausted. The sheer terror of anyone seeing this magazine had led me to buy up all the copies at every store in my neighborhood. I examined my trembling fingers. They were fatter than before. When did that happen?
I reopened the glossy back cover. Did they use a wide-angle lens on the camera? Were there support groups for the people who have appeared in “Glamour Don’ts”? Could I sue for mental anguish and get enough money to hire a personal trainer?
I crawled to my bed with a pair of scissors, a pint of ice cream, a two-litre bottle of Pepsi and a pack of cigarettes. I wept into my Häagen-Dazs, chain-smoking and cutting the rolls off my hideous magazine debut.
Two days later, I discovered that when you have prescriptions delivered, the pharmacy will also send smokes and chocolate. Before the delivery arrived, I’d begun to glue my fat cuttings onto my uncle. I envied the lady wearing too many animal prints; at least she only looked genetically spliced. I looked like Jabba the Hut in platform sandals.
The door chimed. Usually, I change several times before finding the perfect outfit in which to answer the door. At that moment, I only cared that there were no M & M’s stuck in my teeth.
The lanky, greasy-haired delivery guy, wearing a faded Black Sabbath T-shirt, stifled a gasp when I opened the door. I was unable to find the energy to be insulted. It had been days since I’d changed my clothes. I envisioned stink lines rising from me.
“That’ll be, uh, $38.98.” He looked at the small bag quizzically and checked the receipt. “Whoa, I didn’t realize they could sell you that much Valium at once.”
He made my change, slowly. It was at this point that I noticed the commotion outside. A moving van was emptying its contents into the condo across the street. The relative silence of our upscale Toronto condo-complex was shattered by a very thin woman yelling orders. Under her arm was a Dachshund wearing a mauve sweater. In her hand she held the largest martini glass I’d ever seen.
The woman seemed concerned the movers might ding the Mercedes that was parked at a jaunty angle on the sidewalk.
I retreated inside and watched her from my sofa. She spent most of the morning motioning wildly with her drink and sloshing gin on the grass. I fell asleep watching her dog poop in my parking spot.
Monday held nothing in the way of joy. My answering machine blinked incessantly. I feared messages regarding my sausage attire and chose to ignore it. Instead I submerged myself in work: decorating for the aesthetically challenged.
After an hour of staring at the snapshots I’d taken of my latest client’s home, I was thoroughly disgusted. They should have decorating Do’s and Don’ts. My client’s bedroom was whorehouse pink. Her comforter looked as though it had been caught in a tornado in Las Vegas. A rose-smattered valance with lilac sheers accosted the window, and her wallpaper had stripes and paisley and kittens. My sugar-ravaged body suppressed a retch at the sight of the gold-smoked mirrors in the hall. The task at hand began to overwhelm me. She loved the work I’d done with warm neutrals and stark minimalist furnishings in a mutual friend’s apartment. How did someone who could appreciate the sleek lines of Corbusier go so drastically wrong when left to her own devices? Where the hell was her husband when these atrocities were being purchased? I studied the pictures further. He could have been in the shots. Had his wife dressed him he would have blended right in with the rest of the chaos. Perhaps my client was afflicted with the same illness that allowed me to walk through one of the most stylish areas of New York looking like a small water mammal in drag.
Frustrated with the enormity of the project, I gave up and headed for the shower. Green tea shower gel soothed my bruised spirit. I had nearly relaxed when the doorbell started ringing with frightening repetition.
