Title (as given to the record by the creator): Movement
Date(s) of creation:  June, 2005
Creator / author / publisher:  Susan Stinson, Size Queen
Physical description: one page, waves of light blue with black text and a black and white drawing.
Reference #: SizeQueen-16-Movement
Links: [ PDF ]

Movement

For Lynne Gerber

By Susan Stinson

That I am fat brought
me to these wooden steps
                                      by the river

I come down           turned
          to keep weight
                                    off one ankle

                 This twists my knee.

A poet I follow
said pain in the body
is not the same as
pain in the streets

                                 It’s fifteen years since I left
                                my job at noon to listen
                                  to her       across another river

I loved her language already
then       for its pressures

                         She seemed to ask
that I inhabit my politics

that I let a lesbian mind in me
      sweat and stagger        at least half awake
through my desires

but that afternoon
she turned our attention to pain.

Now a heron turns and settles on the bank

          and i am away

from a hotel full of other fat people

who might force me into the courage

                  to press my low breasts
                  against the air as if it were glass

to say we need our pleasures 

but cannot be consumed.

[image: a pen drawing, heavily shaded with crosshatch marks, of a chubby mer person with spiky hair, wearing a t-shirt and pendant around their neck. Their body and tail are intricately patterned. One hand is in the pocket of their mer-skirt. In the other hand they’re holding a small pennant on s stick, which contains an image of a person with their mouth open, as if singing or shouting. Drawing by Olivia E.]