channel crossing

morning a mirror of window

and water. sunlight fogging, freezer burning

through February gray, reflecting

off the Intercontinental with its full-blown

glassy panels until it’s so completely bright

it disappears.

still steeped in sleep. 
channel crossing out of Fort Point 
and walking to work with you.

narrow strait below 
gleaming like a wormhole

and diving in, back to bed—

back to dreaming into your shoulder

where planes don’t land,

aloft in sky a wide blue ribbon

cloudbread buffet.

bottomless Sonoma County sunsets

never touching

down. arrival, on repeat.

berth of bounty worlds away

from dark salt slush, thawing sharp

as a paper cut—

no semblance of winter

up here, on wings (the distance

your presence provides from

colder things)—

water mirrored in the window

seat, awash like points of light—

hands absolute as a parachute

and this, the morning, the walking

with you—the closest thing to flight.

Review of Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology

Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology
Edited by Donna Jarrell and Ira Sukrungruang

Despite a couple murderously cruel essays ("Big Game Hunters" and "Fat Like Him") this collection is exceptionally smart and touching.

From "Fat Lady Nuding": "...I remove every extraneous article of clothing and all accessories and submit myself to the doctor's scale, to the mechanical contraption that has been given the power to determine the quality of the relationship I have with my body." Brilliant.

Meanwhile, Pam Houston's writing ("Out of Habit, I Start Apologizing") is just downright beautiful, along with Stephen Kuusisto's "Fatland" as he writes about "a time in [his] life when for complicated reasons [he] became quite fat," compounded by his blindness and how that influences his body image.

We also see things from a thoughtful doctor's perspective (Atul Gawande's "The Man Who Couldn't Stop Eating") and a harsh psychiatrist's view (Irvin Yalom's "Fat Lady"), both enriching, both complicating matters as practitioners looking from the outside, in.

One of the back jacket's descriptions does this text a disservice: "...these writers make a compelling case for why we should make room for a bigger behind." That's not the message.

Instead, the focus is more about what it's like to have a bigger frame in this thin obsessed society. And what's shared is mostly heavy, not lighthearted.