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Why can't the body heal itself?
True, Steve Jobs, who chose juice fasts
over conventional treatment, decays
on my doctor’s side, but Patrick Swayze
took chemo and is just as dead.
What about Suzanne Somers,
who cured her breast cancer with herbs
and now has lots of sex?
Or maybe that was a different blonde, the one
whose lover pretended to drown.
The cancer part, I mean – the sex
is definitely Somers. I read about her libido
and bioidentical hormones this morning
while avoiding making an appointment
for a blood test and sonogram.
Why do you fill your head
with crap? my husband asks,
missing the point. I want fashion
and mansions to crowd out
important things. Want to convince myself
the body’s so forgiving, a woman
can be flab-free two months after
giving birth to twins. To lose myself in liposuction,
low-cut gowns, and hot affairs. The actors’ plumped,
tucked, frozen faces almost making me believe
that they and I might never die.
Alison Stone
Alison Stone has published seven full-length collections, Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Masterplan, a book of poems with Eric Greinke (Presa Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award, as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award. She was Writer in Residence at LitSpace St. Pete. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. www.stonepoetry.org - www.stonetarot.com. YouTube – Alison Stone Poetry.