HEY! FATSO!

It was a spring-loving day.

YEAH! PORKY!

So early the sun shone deeply warm.

CHOPCHOPCHOP!

Across the fields an easy wind sighed

Fragrant with cherry blossoms.

PIMPLEFACE!

Her bare feet disturbed light eddies of dust.

HEADLIIIGHTS!

Around her thick long hair a red sash glowed.

She felt very beautiful.

Out of the village proper and down the country road

She dream-footed heavily.

She was fat – a porky – pimply – impossibly ridiculous –

And impregnable;

Behind those imperturbable  eyes swelled an exotic bloom

Ripe to unfold rare petals.

She pushed a beat-up baby pram

Carrying a peanut butter sandwich, two books,

A cheap blanket won at a church  fair,

Eyeglasses wrapped in toilet paper,

And a tambourine:

Tin, with six clinky jingles

And the ugly picture of a black-haired dancer,

Spinning,

In vulgar red and bold blue,

A free, wild, whirling

Gypsy.

By the rusted wire gate that no one shut any more because

The farmer kept his cows in another pasture,

Over the oozy ruts

Hop-skipping on the dry spots of the insecure furrows,

Dragging the carriage,

She dream-footed heavily,

The jibes of the village street only a field away.

Down to the creek

Where dashing little waterfalls slowed

To a single sinewy current in mid-stream

And the banks lay in opaque water smoothness,

Damp and glossy with long marsh grass,

Where only the long-fingered weeping willow could point

And the golden-eyed bloodroot see,

Down to the creek

She dream-footed lightly.

Nobody to call: ‘HEY FATSO!   CHOPCHOPCHOP!

By the froggy sky-mirrored water she danced,

Tapping her tambourine,

Quivering with the nervous delight of silken sleeves

Cool slipping down her arms;

Dizzy from the swimming trees excitedly flying around,

Her skirt a swirl of red, orange, green, blue and

Yellow – a treasure, striped in every bright colour,

Hanging to the ankles.

As she jingled her jangles and joyously stamped

Her naked feet, she sang,

‘Tra la la la la la la,’

The clear song of a shameless bird calling

In the springtime.

She flung herself panting to the cushiony earth

And twined her fingers in the sweet grass.

A violet brushed her nose.

She smiled; it was so pretty, its open face so big.

Closing her eyes, back she sank

And dreamed.