“Oh, what shall we do with the big girl? ,”Two Poems, Christina Fisanick.

Oh, what shall we do with the big girl? 

You know the one–from flat chested to C cup 

by the end of fifth grade. The one who has outgrown 

her peers. Her wide hips and pronounced backside shapely 

distractions next to her still straight-as-a-board classmates. 

Somehow the big girl exists simultaneously as ugly, undesirable 

and as an insatiable slut. Her thighs–thick, lurid–calling 

thirtysomething men, they say, with their virginal siren songs. 

She bleeds first–or so she suspects–and hides it 

for months until her crimson rags are discovered 

under the bathroom sink calling a congress of women 

to the kitchen table. Sweat-slicked round-faced, she peers at them 

through a cloud of smoke–Blair 100s, Virginia Slims–swirled 

by the oscillating fan rat-tat-tat-taching in front of the 

open trailer window. In chorus her grandmother, her mother, 

her aunts (just two) chime: “Well, now you have to watch the way 

you act around boys.” That was the talk. All of it. Start to finish. 

Oh, big girl, big beautiful girl, someday you will grow into your body

and out of the corporal prison they put you in. Your fleshy arms

will wrap around yourself again and again and again 

like succulent vines. Your despised belly will become a bounty 

on which future lovers will feast. Oh, big girl, don’t cry. One day you will be more 

than they can handle. They will see the way you love yourself and 

try to punish you. You will laugh at their hate like a ravenous 

Medusa and re-fill your plate sucking the syrupy sweet satisfaction 

off your fingers while staring them straight in their miserable stony eyes.

I wonder what it’s like to be thin 

bird legs propelling me around town

through doors opened eagerly by strangers 

not out of kindness but out of appreciation for 

stick arms waving hello, hugging goodbye, 

flying a kite high above the trees

its yellowredblueness becoming a tiny 

diamond bobbing before a backdrop of 

suspicious gray clouds sparking annoyance

Dr. Christina Fisanick is a multi-media storyteller born and raised in northern Appalachia. In addition to being the author of more than thirty books and hundreds of articles, poems, and essays, Fisanick creates art and digital narratives. She is a writing professor who sometimes teaches literature. She lives with her son and two cats in Wheeling, West Virginia. You can find her writing, art, and videos at christinafisanick.com.

Art: Wesley R. Bishop, “Green Woman,” acrylic on canvas, 2023.