the world unravels in rewind

I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.

and like. do we have to keep gently phrasing things to protect naturally-thin people's feelings. in my life it has never been fashionable to be fat. "fat" is still a bad word. there has never been institutional power pushing people to gain weight; no trillion-dollar industry to "fix" skinny people. a larger body type has never been over-represented in models, influencers, celebrities. sure, people might say "i'm worried for your health," but they do it with respect and gentleness, like they're talking to a scared deer.

every single fucking time i talk about this, i have to be so careful with what i say, in case i offend even one skinny person. it is just true that skinny people have social capital across many cultures. there is a reason you almost never hear someone say "i wish i was fat," but you will constantly see people say "I wish i was thin." and yet inevitably some skinny person will tell me: i thought you wanted body positivity. it is the same fucking attitude as when a cis man says "when you say men have power, well, i've been bullied for being a man. i thought you believe in mental health awareness. don't you know men have a higher suicide rate?"

two things can be true at once: your experience being bullied for being thin was terrible. and people with larger bodies probably have it worse.

i have been big and small. i know many other people who have been big and small. trust what i'm about to tell you: being small is much easier. the world is kinder to you. people treat you better. honestly, this pattern occurs pretty much regardless of gender - my guy friends have confided that they'd rather be bullied for being thin than be bullied for being fat. if you're skinny, the pressure might be to gain weight, sure, but it's often to do so in a way that keeps you skinny - to gain muscle, specifically.

thinness is seen as innate and natural, genetic. whereas carrying any fat - that is a moral failing. it is assumed to be related to your character, your personality. i have seen people equate it to discipline, to hygiene. that bias is why we need to talk about this.

Since the dawn of human civilization, folks have been telling stories about other dope-ass civilizations that were lost forever. Think of Atlantis. El Dorado, the "Lost City of Gold." Narnia. And now: Wisconsin. It didn't used to be this way.

Decades ago, when I was growing up, we understood that Wisconsin was a real place. It was in our textbooks. It was on our maps, sandwiched in between Minnesota and a big-ass lake. Did we know anyone who had been there? No. I grew up in Canada, and despite Ontario supposedly "bordering" the big W, I didn't know anyone from there who had visited, either. What was even there to visit? Rather than confront the awful truth, we stuck it out, convinced that what our betters had told us was true.

It wasn't until the revolution that we started to find out what was real. In all the chaos, some of the rioters got into the Information Ministry's buildings. So many horrible conspiracies had been inflicted upon us for our so-called good. In those, we found agreements between Canada and the United States, to make up the entire concept of a state. What purpose could it have? To disappear dissidents, it turns out: just like your parents told you that Tucker P. Hotdog went to a nice farm upstate, so too did a bunch of your more radical schoolteachers "take a transfer to Madison." It sounded so unappealing, none of us would dare follow up and drop in on them.

from Every Time I Ever Said I Want to Die Andrea Gibson

[...] a difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one. Joy is just easier to carry than sorrow, and you could lift a city

from how long you’ve spent holding what’s been nearly impossible to hold. This world needs those who know

how to do that. Those who can find a tunnel with no light at the end of it and hold it up like a telescope

to show that the darkness contains many truths that can bring the light to its knees. Grief astronomer,

adjust the lens, look close. Tell us what you see.

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Read the full poem here and see it performed. Spoken word poet Andrea Gibson (they/them) died this past July, aged 49, of ovarian cancer. The movie Come See Me in the Good Light is about their remarkable last year coming to terms with mortality.

Also by Andrea Gibson: + Instead of Depression + In the chemo room, I wear mittens made of ice so I don’t lose my fingernails. But I took a risk today to write this down.

More spoken word/slam poets here.

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And that, my friends, brings us to the end of another poetry month. But fear not, I leave you with gifts:

+ a totally re-done tag directory, to let you explore all 660(!!) previously shared poems by topic, vibe, format, and more. + An actually up-to-date alphabetical list for quickly finding specific poets. + A magical link to a random poem from the past and the chronological archives.

And of course you can always beat on, boats against the current, and be borne back ceaselessly into the past:

2025: Dead Stars, Ada Limón 2024: A Valentine for Ernest Mann, Naomi Shihab Nye 2023: Oral History of Insatiability, Jason Myers 2022: Try to Praise the Mutilated World, Adam Zagajewski 2021: In Defense of a Long Engagement, Mairead Small Staid 2020: Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness, Mary Oliver 2019: Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver 2018: Born Yesterday, Philip Larkin 2017: Thus, He Spoke His Quietus, Thomas Lux 2016: Trees, W.S. Merwin 2015: Today and Two Thousand Years from Now, Philip Levine 2014: from For a Long Time I Have Wanted to Write a Happy Poem, Richard Jackson 2013: Tear It Down, Jack Gilbert 2012: from An Atlas of the Difficult World, Adrienne Rich 2011: Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, Naomi Shihab Nye 2010: from Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman 2009: from The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 2008: from Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot 2007: Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot 2006: Preludes, T.S. Eliot 2005: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot