Bodies Like Oceans: a Paint Lyric

Spare me your thin tidings

bring round your technicolour fats

Your baby fat, your aging fat

fat of the azure tide

Fat of the earl grey worm

bring me that stubborn belly

Fat of the muted

Low-intensity and tinted

Pocked, puckered and hyper-pigmented

fat-on-fat-on-fat fat

Flesh, that responds to brush,

shimmers at the suggestion

A colour wheel of fat, tested

to withstand the fallow ire. Please,

Don’t mention the memory

of muscle without the tensile tincture—

Long live the high-hued splendour

of fat privilege. Oh, neutral canvas,

Whom do you comfort, with your ease

whose paint knife scrapes across your palette?

Clawed my way out

of your clean love

And into the world’s fat shine

world that works to dull

Me, I stay vibrant and alive

rounded at every corner

Keep your thin spectacle,

your khaki hula hoop

Fat of the forgotten republic

I lift you out of the shade

Let your contours spill over with light

I offer not the lemon,

But the entire rainbow as heaven.