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Route 7 Review

Alison Stone—My Doctor and I Throw Celebrities at Each Other

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.

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