Queer Fat


All of the obese bodies mimic strange
Animals that mimic strange animals. I
A node in a simulacra of fat, a cartoonish
Mushroom with doll eyes, budding up
Optimistic until it collapses into pebbles
Made of meat. The eyes roll into the skull,
Flutter, and everything is oily porcelain. O,
A matter of pork porking sex fluid around
Rocks, and stones, and horrific trees. I
Is about as distinct as a cell in cellulose
Butter spread on a hairy thigh. The brain
In the leg secretes its own fluid. The fluid
Moves slimy with all of the blunt agility
Of decomposing antelope guts, schizophrenic
As a fanciful death coil producing a rare
Music whimsically in a nocturnal luxury.
All of the mimicry is strange and obese.
All of the animals reflect each other's oil
Sheen. Simulacra at the speed of capital pink
Spewing the material of a skull cage. Opening
To decay, to jizz confusion, to fat thinking, I
Think. Mimicry and fat boils its cruel illusion.




Aaron Apps is a PhD student in English Literature at Brown University. He also holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Minnesota. His first book of poetry Compos(t) Mentis came out from Blazevox [Books] in 2012, and his second book of hybrid-genre prose, Intersex, is forthcoming from Tarpaulin Sky Press in 2014. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in LIT, Washington Square Review, Verse, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Pleiades, Caliban, PANK, Caketrain, Sleepingfish, and elsewhere.