Roseanna Alice Boswell’s “The Shape of a Nervous Stomach” was chosen by contest judge Diamond Forde as The Hunger’s 2020 Winter Poetry Contest Winner. Forde had the following praise for Boswell’s poem:
“This poem is a beautiful bridge between body and mind; its movement hinges on rhetorical turns and leaps, but is so rooted in the magnificent, visceral body, it "[coughs] white-yellow froth", it "[shudders] into a boneless shimmer." The fat speaker in this poem holds refreshing complexity; their body: a simultaneous witness to trauma, and a corpulent shield against it.”
The Shape of a Nervous Stomach
I used to get sick every Saturday morning on the drive to ballet lessons.
Car pulled to the side of the road to heave an empty belly
on the grass. Every Christmas was the same: before presents, kneeled
over and coughing white-yellow froth into the toilet bowl.
I am confused by the phrases we use to explain things away:
a tough childhood can mean that you grew up without cable and Disneyland,
or it can mean your father drank himself into a sightless-rage every night.
My father didn’t drink, but Evangelicals lean heavy on discipline and respect.
Any means to get it. Perhaps there is a Venn diagram for childhood
trauma. Or perhaps it’s not hard to pretend that nothing before age 18
matters. I’ve made a playlist for every feeling there is. One for horny,
one for lonely, two for hungry. Fat girls can’t have eating disorders
because we are not the right aesthetic for that kind of trauma. Try
low-self-esteem, instead. Google how to care more (suggested text) enough
(suggested text)—then diagnose yourself. I’m better at posing
for thirst traps than orgasming because I can only relax long enough
for a camera shutter. At least my husband will have a gallery of my body
on his phone, enough to outline my massive frame. When I do cum,
it is with a gasp of surprise—my body holding onto his and shuddering,
shuddering into a boneless shimmer of pleasure. This is what I try to remember
when a man sees me in a Wal-Mart parking lot and makes an animal noise
at my body. Not like a pig or a cow, but a snarl. All my flesh quivers
to camouflage my horror or longing. But you can see it, right? The way
my silhouette could absorb a tooth’s friction—then spit it back out.
Roseanna Alice Boswell is a queer poet from Upstate New York. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in: Driftwood Press, Jarfly Magazine, Capulet Magazine, and elsewhere. Roseanna holds an MFA from Bowling Green State University, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at Oklahoma State University. Her first collection, Hiding in a Thimble, is forthcoming with Haverthorn Press in 2021. Find her on Twitter @swellbunny posting about feminism and her love of exclamation marks.