for Anne Brumley

       Amid crustless sandwiches
the talk is all of fat and fat-
       studies: at your conference
you’ll talk of Jonson, portly

       and unfashionable, who
was painted fat, ridiculed fat, and,
       we might infer, wrote fat –
his verses creeping into fat and dusty

       tomes in uninterrogated
dark corners – his jolly, fat face
       suited to lamplight
and eleven courses, while

       over coffee or in sweats
we shift to brown rice
       and choi sum, to
fluorescence, and we lament

       the nation’s pets who
by and large weigh in
       too heavy, as we try to cut
a slender line.