Topography, by Lesleigh Owen

Occasionally a poet comes along who transforms words into magic.

Lesleigh Owen is such a poet. She writes magic and "fats" it unbelievably.


Happy Birthday,  Lesleigh.

This poem is from Fat Poets Speak 2:  Living and Loving Fatly




Topography                                  Lesleigh Owen

I travel the city,

a fat body writ large

with streets for veins

and hills

and grassy knolls

with clumps

of brackish fragrance.

Yellow grass crackles underfoot

while a sky, blue as weeping eyes,

presses down,

a glossy windowpane.

Pathways wind and lead and

devour,

like thighs, always leading inward,

beige gradually darkening:

a tunnel, a turnpike.

I can’t see where to go

but don’t always

feel lost.

The wind trembles against me,

sighs up my skirt,

a breath of life

that steals my words.

Leafless trees groan upward,

thorns piercing dimpled flesh.

Brown-gray, the ground

shudders beneath

spills of acorns.

The terrain is too rugged for flowers,

though red roses hang upside-down,

spent and drying.

Earth cracks and crumbles

while short, plump fingers

caress, untangle, untie

knotted clouds.

Three months ago, I moved away

from California but

no closer to Florida.

Middle ground, middle

and open my mouth wide

to breathe comfort

and actions into words

and in those moments, 

I can almost taste the bottom

of the world.

Copyright 2013, by Lesleigh Owen