Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

As some of us work to reclaim and celebrate our bodies in all their myriad of forms, many people are reclaiming the word “fat.” Owning the word, owning their bodies and rendering the word free of its negative connotations. In articles everywhere from Teen Vogue to The New York Times, folks are taking the time to explain that the word “fat” itself isn’t a bad word. In fact, in Self Magazine, the writer and co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase, (a podcast I highly recommend if you like all things about diet culture being debunked and dragged through the mud… confession: I love it) Aubrey Gordon writes, “We need to talk about the word fat. Specifically, we as a collective society need to make room for understanding fat the way many plus-size people do: as a neutral, even affirming, term.”

I am interested in how we reclaim language, I mean of course I am, I’m a poet. And how many times have I wanted to reach into someone’s mouth and take a word back, take my own name back so they couldn’t own it or use it against me. I want the language we use to be smart, intentional, well thought out, and I want it not to do harm. I don’t always get my way, clearly. But I love celebrating the way we can own our own words, even those once used against us. Like putting stones in the riverbed, we can make them shine all over again.

Today’s poem explores the word “fat” in a smart and rhythmic way. I love this poem because it allows the listener to experience the way the speaker has lived with the word “fat,” and how she changed it.

And the Word Was God
by Savannah Sipple

In the beginning was the word and the word was FAT
in the beginning I was fat            in the beginning I was lean &
long carried two weeks past due & wore preemie clothes & then I 
chunked up        baby fat               a fat baby            baby I grew big
grew big boned                                 grew six inches taller than the other
little girls             grew hips & thighs & breasts before my time
in percentile on all the doctors’ charts                   I grew      I knew
I was too large                                    too loud too mouthy for boys
I knew even then I loved girls                        I knew I knew I knew
by how loud the boys said no               I wanted them to say no
              I wanted them to say
yes                         I wanted to feel like I could stop
burying myself in my body            my body grew large
my body grew larger          a walk-in closet            I stood on the inside
hiding behind dresses                  on the outside                  Bible verses
& Jesus              men who made sure I heard them tell me
my body was not my own            my mind was not my own
but it was it was it was                  so I started to drag myself out
I kicked that door            open                      I kicked it down
haven’t looked back look            don’t look back                   don’t look
back at the beginning                  in the beginning was that word
              and that word was God                               the word is not God
I am God             I am that word                                 I am God’s
word                     I am still                                 fat

"And the Word Was God" by Savannah Sipple from WWJD AND OTHER POEMS copyright © 2019 Savannah Sipple. Published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Used by permission of the poet.