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    Fat Kid, The
    Fat Kid, The
    Fat Kid, The
    Ebook73 pages40 minutes

    Fat Kid, The

    By Paul Vermeersch

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    About this ebook

    Poetry kills the beautiful people. The Fat Kid, Paul Vermeersch's second full-length collection of poetry, chronicles a childhood troubled by obesity, poor body image, and low self-esteem. The media's perfect faces, societal expectations, family concerns, and primitive socialization rituals collide with the already horrendous physical and emotional tribulations of adolescence to drive Calvin Little over the edge. He'll stop at nothing to become beautiful and weightless, but he must conceal his battle with what the world has come to know as a girl's disease. Is there redemption in social acceptance, in romantic love, in escaping gravity? Is it enough to learn to love yourself? Calvin's journey is told in a sequence of poems steeped in both the physical and psychological worlds, in voices that range from the bawdy to the elegiac. In The Fat Kid Calvin Little becomes the ideal antihero — for a shallow culture obsessed with thin.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherECW Press
    Release dateApr 1, 2002
    ISBN9781554902378
    Fat Kid, The

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      Book preview

      Fat Kid, The - Paul Vermeersch

      better.

      The grass’ll be greener when pigs learn to fly,

      since none of the pigs’ll come trampling by,

      and the dirt’ll be richer,

      the rain’ll be thicker,

      and the pigs’ll be happier ’n pigs in shit

      gliding from barn roof to slop trough to sty.

      O the world will be better

      (and a shitload wetter, if you consider the weather)

      when pigs learn to fly.

      Birth of a Fat Kid

      Something’s gone wrong in the suburbs.

      In backyards the June bugs

      are going up in flames,

      and a block away it’s raining, but it isn’t raining here.

      Something is happening.

      Sheet lightning in the south —

      across the flatland of lawns and parking lots

      the tall steel cylinders and concrete poles hum

      a single note of million-watt juice

      through the haywire crisscross of fat black cables

      strung over Mississauga.

      It comes whirring though the green transformer

      into the yard.

      You can feel it in your feet. The sign says

      Do Not Touch — It’s

      dangerous.

      Relax, there’s beer

      in the fridge, neighbours on lawn chairs.

      There’s nothing much to do. It’s getting dark,

      no one’s going anywhere.

      Relax.

      Each street, each crescent — like the city itself —

      no reason to come here unless you come home to it.

      A woman

      pulls her sweatshirt to her knees, calls her girls in

      from the street.

      She’s pregnant again.

      Can they afford this? He’s coming.

      He will arrive when it’s cold, the air will sting

      fingers and ears, a mouth

      to feed, an ass to wipe, born the morning

      of the Santa Claus parade, fat and jolly, a change

      of plans, and the whole day ruined

      for the girls.

      She feels a kick and it weighs on her.

      He’s already shifting his weight; maybe

      he’s already disappointed about it.

      There will be lights.

      There will be painful insults, lightning

      will strike the beach, and in the morning,

      a lump of glass: 6 pounds, 11 ounces.

      There will be strawberry shortcake, television shows,

      tight-fitting casual slacks. . . .

      There will be everything he will know in his life.

      There will be everything there is to know

      about a boy.

      Nativity with Pound Cake

      Heavy in the crèche, the child has messed himself.

      Treetop, the angel stands: store-bought, plastic, and cheap —

      but a symbol of love.

      There is a genuine happiness these days, watching football,

      eating chips.

      Momma says to an in-law, "Well, maybe

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