Na PoWriMo DAY SEVEN 7 April 2020
FAT NEWS
I wonder: could this story be true?
Cocaine hippos (a late drug lord
ordered a twosome imported to his estate)
through their progeny, it seems,
might in time change Colombia’s fate,
(ruled by drug trade, besieged by crime)
redeem the country’s ecosystem.
I once strolled through Medellin,
cocaine capital of the world. Met
no hippopotamus, but a woman, fat,
silver-haired, her dress night-blue,
stopped me, whispered:
“quitate el reloj, hijita”,
take off your watch and bracelet too,
or they’ll chop off your hand–
saving grace in a foreign
land from a random, corpulent stranger,
without a prayer to Santa Rita.
Caesar Augustus knew it, said:
(if I remember right) “Let me have fat men,
round-headed and that sleep o’night”.
His pious wish, not trite, too late,
lean Brutus murdered him.
Botero knows it: his sculptured women
flashing luscious hips, fleshy thighs,
his mighty, massively soft-muscled men
carved from alabaster or black stone,
turned crime-riddled Medellin
into a cultural, peaceable town.
Clearly there’s kinship with cocaine hippos,
humongous, free-ranging, meaty chunks,
akin to preextinction species, claimed
to bring unnamed paleoecological change.
The people of Tonga demanded
their king’s worthiness weighed–
an exorbitant number of pounds
round evidence of royalty.
What is it about fat bodies
that dubs them a saving grace?
Skin hugging bones rhymes
with scant health, advancing age,
plumpness is reassuring,
adipose tissue a sign of wealth,
palpable, breathing, alive,
solid corporality, sign of abundance,
imparts power of physical presence.
Presently, tonight, a royal full moon,
fat, rose-colored, round,
invites to contemplate, revere–
I’ll go outside, soon it won’t be there.
