Tag: weight

A Body Wholly Body by Jeff Newberry

~ ONE ART ~ 3 Comments

A Body Wholly Body

There is order in the way the nurse calls
me back to the scale, where I step
up to be weighed and therefore judged.
I’m taken to a small room to await
the coming doctor—sans plague mask—
who enters with on light feet
and sits, taps a clipboard, and prophesies
my future of fat, my heart, my veins
thick with cholesterolled sludge.
The heart beats. The blood pumps.
The pricked index tells my story
of late-night snack cakes and long
afternoons spent, legs crossed, a book
on my lap instead of placing one foot
in front of the other on a track or street.
My body is bonded and printed
on neat white paper. My body
is signed and directed to a lab
where a bored nurse draws more blood.
Everything lined, sketched, and charted.
Tell me, if you know, my doctor,
why the pale light of this exam room
and the cold steel of the exam table
call to mind a chilly January
when they laid my father in a coffin.
Tell me why when I look back
on that day, I remember nothing
save silence and the weight of a body
laid low, sinking down into the earth.

*

Jeff Newberry’s most recent book is the hybrid collection Frames: A Memoir (Another New Calligraphy). His writing has appeared in a number of print and online publications, recently appearing in Stone Circle Review, Sursurrus, and Sugar House Review.

Weights & Measures by Francesca Leader

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Weights & Measures

I still don’t know how
You can compliment a girl
Without infecting her,

Say she’s perfect
Without seeding worry
Of when she won’t be

Anymore, span her
Waist with hands
Amarvel at its minuteness

Without encoding
Lovability as the ability
To fit inside something

Else, submit to
Subsumption. I still don’t
Know how you can

Expect a girl’s soul
Not to snag on BMI charts,
Measurements, bodyfat

Ratios, celebrity weight
Loss and “Half My Size” stories,
Because they’re

Everywhere—number-shaped
Briars ensnarling all
Paths to self-acceptance—

Or tell her to inure,
Ignore, be tough but soft,
A paradox, like vanity sizing

That makes her crave
The labels that anoint her
A 2 and damn the brands

That brand her a 12,
As if she could be “S”
And “L” at once,

Survive the truth
Of weighing & measuring how
Much she matters in inverse

Proportion to how much
(Always too much) matter
She comprises, for bodies

Most loved are the
Bodies that least exist.
I still don’t know how

You can call a girl
Beautiful because she’s thin
Or ugly because she isn’t

Without engendering
Pathology, a fixation sickness
On what is visible

Instead of what is whole.

*

Francesca Leader has poetry published or forthcoming in Abyss & Apex, HAD, Broadkill Review, Stone Circle, The Storms Journal, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net (2025) and Best Spiritual Literature (2025). Her debut poetry chapbook, “Like Wine or Like Pain,” is available from Bottlecap Press. Learn more about her work at inabucketthemoon.wordpress.com.

Work Ethic by Tamara Madison

~ ONE ART ~ 5 Comments

Work Ethic

In Irish, sadness is a thing that is on a person:
Sadness is on me, grief upon me.

Yes, I feel it. Like a weight. But mine
surrounds me too, a fog that sunlight
can’t disperse; it’s not a coat I can shrug off
and hang in a closet. It’s more than just
upon me now; it dwells in me, part
of my aging self, like bunions, wrinkles,
arthritis. I’ve made a decision: Today,

I will garden. There are weeds to pull,
gutters to clean, storm debris to sweep.
Grief can sit in its bloody corner and do
as it must. I’ll pat its head from time to time.
But for now, I’ve got work to do.

*

Tamara Madison is the author of three full-length volumes of poetry, “Wild Domestic”, “Moraine” (both from Pearl Editions) and “Morpheus Dips His Oar” (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), and two chapbooks, “The Belly Remembers” (Pearl Editions) and “Along the Fault Line” (Picture Show Press). Her work has appeared in Chiron Review, Your Daily Poem, the Writer’s Almanac, Sheila-Na-Gig, Worcester Review, ONE ART, and many other publications. More about Tamara can be found at tamaramadisonpoetry.com.