Linda M. Crate's (she/her) poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has ten published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019), the samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing, October 2020), Follow the Black Raven (Alien Buddha Publishing, July 2021), Unleashing the Archers (Guerilla Genesis Press, August 2021), and Hecate's Child (Alien Buddha Publishing, November 2021) and three micro-chapbooks Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018), moon mother (Origami Poems Project, March 2020), and & so I believe (Origami Poems Project, April 2021). She is also the author of the novella Mates (Alien Buddha Publishing, March 2022).
fat isn't a curse word
even though there is no one watching you sometimes you're still ashamed to eat food, you hate it; because it makes you feel guilty for needing it to survive—even though you know those thoughts are silly, you cannot help but feel them all the same pressing against your skull on the worst of days; those whispers that say: fat, a single word that feels like a bullet hole to your ego—a singular word loaded with loathing, sometimes you still wish for a body that is anything except the one that looks like yours; there are days you still hate yourself as much as you have begun to unlearn everything rotten that they told you some lessons are hard to unlearn—you wish you could have skinny privilege because then people wouldn't make you feel uncomfortable with their stares, you could slip by undetected; the worst insult you would hear is: "eat a cheeseburger"; because unfortunately no matter your body size someone will mock you—but on the bad days, all you want is for your mind to stop echoing the word fat as if it is something terrible and horrible and villainous.