skinnyfat jesus in the 40-day heat
tasteful naked woman twisted overhead hangs forcing me to look the word Shapely in the italic one arm inert across breasts no pubes whatsoever hand flung on the back of her head proves she’s never heard of armpit hair you’ve won TWO free slimming sessions at LONDON WEIGHT MANAGEMENT! the first time she touches me the shape of suggestion: you might be OLD but you don’t need to be FAT indignities half-off postural suggestions: a leaping gazelle with head tilt like frostbite the slimming manager holds me in front of the mirror. gently then so firmly I lose balance. she shows me how bloated. curving wrong. being held here reminds me of being spread open forced to look so my hole cunt is apparent to me of neck holds voice in my ear making me slick except slimming managers have never heard of lesbians, BDSM, erotic degradation, asphyxiation for fun & pleasure highly specific about serving only FEMALE customers it’s ok if I get wet if they never smell it wear nothing but paper bra and paperer bloomers. gel smears on my stomach slope an insistent sucking whine. vacuum hungering scifiesque for underskin wobble would be sensual without her repeatedly asking which other of my parts dissatisfied me. my gizzard, I tell her patiently. bordering on incredulous she asks, where else? I refrain from elaborating I am incandescence walking the earth unused to inventing imperfection receiver of worship as my due slimming manager resorts to waving my wedding at me says if I do not submit myself she cannot make me sexy sexy like that lists other women’s insecurities: particularly when fat spills over the back clasp of their bra (foreign experience to me, non-bra wearer) offers obscene price reductions for using my data in a case study I say, keep it, it’s on the house, feeling like skinnyfat jesus in the circling 40-day heat the prettiest of slimfit temptresses points out my grotesque shoulders rounded and ogrelike she asks but why do you think you don’t need this. flummoxed I can only say idiotically because there is no need. the tasteful Shapely woman she’s nothing but framing, arresting, sentenced to real conviction, displayed in the effulgent cavern of shamelessness slimming manager keeps asking me why but she speaks only mandarin so it sounds like, what is your way of thinking? what is your thought? what were you thinking? and I, must stop thinking right now
Audio: Marylyn Tan reads “skinnyfat jesus in the 40-day heat”
Marylyn Tan is a writer, artist and menace whose work disrespects respectability, reclaims power and emancipates the endangered. Fair of verse and foul of mouth, she uses her body of work to work with the body. Invested in performance tomfoolery and being a female pervert, her work trades in the conventionally obscene and radically pleasurable, often drawing from themes of the occult, grotesque and esoteric.
Her first book, GAZE BACK (Lambda loser), published by Ethos Books and acquired by The Georgia Review, made her the first woman in history to win the Singapore Literature Prize for Poetry. It is the longest-running and most prestigious national literary award. She is also the co-parent of the anthology of boundary- and form-pushing verse, New Singapore Poetries (2022), published by Gaudy Boy Press. Her latest chapbook, Unclench, is forthcoming from Glass Poetry Press in 2026.
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