Fat Man

How fat were they? They were really fat. —James Taylor, Shocked and Amazed

This larded fat’s no £5 barrow swine:
like Barnum’s sperm whales, blubber boiled in brine,
his salt-packed ham hocks weigh a quarter ton.
His gut churns, Globe of Death or smoked pork bun;
the clutch jaw in his suckling skull’s unhinged.
Greased, adiposean, but barely singed
when P.T.’s curios went up in flame—
tusked waxworks split; king cannibal courts maimed;
those sperm whales blistered in their rendering tanks—
Big’s brisket muscles, buttered heart to flanks,
chilled like the cold cream lining of a fox
fur wrap. Too clot to hug. Lugged off, a Bock’s-
car bomb. Pitched like a pack of magic, Big
blots Nagasaki. Flying fetal pig
or fetid sumo, not a Trinity
test Gadget, but a warhead-slash-divinity,
slick sideshow Buddha, last Fat Man on Earth
or in the Milky Way with planetary girth.