With my thick, awkward fingers you taught me

to plait your hair. Boundless hips like the earth,

you had said. Lizzo-fierce. Big Grrl sexy.

You can’t be a MILF without belly-birth

curves, thighs like mountains. Before work, after

your kids are at school, you’d drip, dark like plum

juice, like my tongue slick between, like a prayer

down for the Willendorf. Clits thrum, cunts cum,

you’d said. Neighbors talked, “look at them, howling

on her stoop, with some of the worst braided

cornrows ever.” They scowled, “and at her age?”

Fierce looks like many things, but fierce fucking

looks like this. Beyond rude. Beyond wicked.

Beyond the haters and all their daft rage.

][][

Notes:

Venus of Willendorf is a 30,000 year old statue, unearthed in 1908, and thought to be some sort of fertility idol by many male archaeologists at the time due to its, “exaggerated,” sexual features, and not, say, just simply erotic for desire’s own sake. This is why so many archaeologists are horrible at their jobs. When I refer to Lizzo as a, “goddess who walks among us,” what I mean is that she is revolutionary in the deepest sense of that term. She is giving voice and making change happen in a world toxic with body-shaming and fatphobia. She tells us, “I love normalizing the dimples in my butt or the lumps in my thighs or my back fat or my stretch marks. I love normalizing my Black-ass elbows. I think it’s beautiful.” Amen.