The scarred hieroglyphics at the back of her throat 
chronicled a history of absence 
Her father’s form fluctuated
Sometimes he was a salad
sometimes he was the exact shape and weight of nine burgers, 
Sometimes he was the shape of a family pizza, two large cokes, a large chips, and three litres of Neapolitan ice-cream, please.  
 
Catherine was a big girl and people liked to remind her 
She’d hear the jeers and mockery from the kids that liked to grind her 

She was ‘fatty boom batty’ 
She was ‘blimp,’ she was ‘whale, 
blob, chunk, porky pig, 
Heifer,’ she was ‘heeeeell - look at that hog
 
How much does she eat?
I bet she can shit!’

But sticks and stones can’t break those big bones 

SHE ATE THOSE WORDS UP 
They resounded, reverberated, 
and echoed around her head
And became the names she’d call herself

Galumphing up stairs, 
she’d intone, ‘Stop wheezing 
you lard ass.  Stop sweating 
you salad dodger.  You fat fuck.”

In the bathroom, The shelves were three feet deep in beauty potions, 
pills, tweezers, scrubs, peels and bleachers

Looking at what she could fit in the mirror 
Elephant skin at her elbows  
Stones for ankles
She conspired 

Spitting ice, the shower rattled into life
Like Catherine, her bathroom perspired 
and mould grew black, 
no matter how she'd clean
It would advance back

She picked up the razor and studied it

Sssshhhhh shuck shuck shuck 
Ckckck ckckckc ckckckc

She shaved her armpits 
Ckckckc ckckckc ckckckckck

and shaved what she could find of her sex
She saved her eyebrows 
Then she shaved her head 
But she didn't feel shaved enough

A little extra pressure in the safety razor and drew a blood

Soothing
A release
like a spot popped  
A erupted 
All hot 
Hot 
All red 
All wet
All wet 


She took the blade to her belly and scraped deep 
Shaving away the anger

She filled a bucket of salt water and poured it over her

She carried on scraping and digging away at herself until a valve was released 
It gushed forth 
This wasn't blood 
This was older than blood
This fury
This fire
She squirted out her sadness
She squirted out her vitriol 
She squirted out the names she was called 
And she could see them running down the wall 
Squirting and vomiting 
She shaved at her muscles
Her sinew 

She saw her lungs beneath her ribs 
She saw them filling and emptying 
Fattening and thinning

She pulled at them and saw something beneath 
Hair 

She scraped at her neck pulled back her face and at the point she died she was standing 
She didn't fall 

There was something beneath 

Her ribs cracked and were prised apart 
From inside a beautiful, slim face poked out
Blood stained 
Beautiful 

It was Catherine 
Reborn 

She slipped off that fat body like a wet wool dressing gown 

And walked downstairs and out of the front door 

She’s walking down the high street, newborn and utterly beautiful 
Passers by falling in love 
Admiring her 
Stroking her naked flesh 
She smiling with new thin lips 

She’s sitting at a restaurant
Six waiters float over 
all lust and love

She orders a salad

There are families and the elderly and truck drivers

They all stare

A fat woman looks over with a smile in her eyes 

Catherine feels rocks of lava on her tongue and says

'What are you looking at, you fat fuck?'

Catherine

It's been seventy six hours since you left me
It's been eighty three hours since I slept 
It's been sixteen packs of cigarettes
A pristine stack of big regrets 
I’m so scared of myself - what will I do next?

It's been twenty two seconds since I called you 
Musta been fifteen hundred times all in all 
Won't be redeemed, even with these schemes 
She can see between like laser beam 
I've been screaming, I've been scheming, I’ve been crying

Pick up the phone
Pick up the phone
Answer the phone
Answer the phone

Twenty Two guys behind my back there 
There were even people coming when I slept? 
She blew those things like a clarinet
Strumpet dressed as a suffragette  
There are just some things that I will not accept 

Cinnamon and apple for her lip gloss
more like cyanide and mustard on the tongue 
But I’m a pessimist since last we kissed     
but I’d not resist if she twist my wrist
She’s a terrorist with a fist inside my asshole   

Pick up the phone
Pick up the phone
Answer the phone
Answer the phone

freefall satellite
snakebite
fist fight
dial tone dial tone
midnight
redlight
erudite hermaphrodite 
tracklined parasite 
dial tone dial tone
burning in the morning light 

She’s a cynical sophoisticat 
She’s Boudicca, 
she’s a coup d’état 
as soon as man produces cash
the fools are soon removed from that

She’s a hit-and-run-bit-of-fun 
amazon to come upon
Sits atop the pantheon 
This elegant phenomenon

All Babylon and Ghengis Kahn
Venemous Decepticon 
She’ll lick your lids like Oberon 
to sow her own rapprochement 

she brews unrivalled epsilon 
to the highest echelon
She’s beauteous, a paragon
so eloquent a mastodon

Eau de toilette Chloroform 
a matador, a thunderstorm 
This Catherine of Arrogance  
advantage is her mother tongue 

A troubadour, a unicorn
Identity in plural form
all skewed in prudish Uniform
Revered in runes and cuneiform 

If you want to romance a mantis
don’t expect to keep your head

Batrimons