YESSS!

It’s my birthday.
Help clarify the urges,
the fun, the smiles.

Take a trip,
in a way.

Foods are available
in the olive groves
at this seaside hotel.

Even the minibar
is part Nordic,
a butterfly

fly

cutthroat

the middle of
everything

you need.

Listen up! When you alter your extreme
culprits, these sit on the follicles of a seal.
Avoid rough waves, coarse exercise, extra
friction. What makes you pretty? 4 months
of nausea, travels to coastal Mexico, night.
A clinical formula proves its effectiveness.
It stays strong day after day—silky, foamy.
The most important rule: Gear up for your
strongest appetite, loss from all angles,
bent in your favorite shape. Join a cult—
give your banishing the best hunger, feel
just as chronically stressed. The answers
are within your gut, we think. Our guts.

With these magazine poems, sometimes even if the entire poem doesn’t hang together perfectly, I find a certain phrase or image that I love and that I never would have written on my own. For example, yesterday, I was pleased with the idea of “Lemon Top, a gorgeous dancer” and then ending firmly with “Her.”

Above is the path I took through the end of the magazine and then back to the cover. I allow myself to use either a single word or a phrase, but my rule is that I have to use them in order. I am allowed to move forward as far as I need to, to get the next word or phrase, but I can’t skip around. 

I’ve been thinking about what kind of person Lemon Top might be. I hope you, too, enjoy some of the odd turns of phrase and surprising juxtapositions in these poems.

Do you like beautiful eyeliner made with parsnips?
Our hummingbird spurs me to trip on the beach.
Say hello to this new lifestyle: Totally chic sparks
fly out of the box. Juice is the word to describe
this style of blackberry. Complex. Here’s your
sweet spot, without a second thought. BOING!
As you move like a climbing sun (my definition
of a fear of heights), think, Without compromise,
doesn’t it change the light I brought to you?

After a good 15 years in Brooklyn, the
sunny girl next door is a buttery kitten.
Before her joy was real, she managed

to have three kids in a horror film of a
teacher with her own monster to keep.

Her cool, relaxed life. Her pregnancy.
Her bike ride in the morning, alone.

Lemon Top, a gorgeous dancer. Her.

Surprising? Arriving.
A given. Don’t stop
the fat of the bite.

Char a sharp little
salad, serve fresh.
Cook down a bright

heat, eat the ribs,
your own handfuls
at the market, toss

a hammer into your
body, yourself—
you feel amazing.

How to achieve it?
Savor your serene
brain, naturally,

seeking out the best
version of you, only
better, in a way—

fill your plate with
red wine, sea salt,
your younger self.

That’s the evidence for aluminum cans: We
absorb them when we eat certain meats.
We even ingest flame, our computer.

What can we do with canned goods in our homes?

Open windows to disperse them. Mend
fitted fire. Think about food for toilets.
There’s a lot to love about writing. Try to.

The special substances that sleep in your gut
have circadian rhythms in the brain, an animal
that is absolutely necessary, my doctor said.

What is love? A beautiful forward flexion,
a stronger tilting forward, you assume,
holding your breath. Always a wild ride.

All the fun comes with—goodness!—a more
meaningful connection, the wilderness of a
brand-new hotel in the ocean. Or a stream.

Get excited for still lifes—cool things off,
actually. Keep everything in place. Fear fury,
love, spring. Remove flowers, start to discard
cake, leaving streaks of sugar. Get more
hidden than ever before. Do you like
all kinds of experience? Just let the new
way hover over the muck of this trail with
a realization: Tree bark is the only substitute
for starlight—strength in your spark, she says.

People love to go facedown on a luxury eco trip,
doing good along the way, cycling into small towns
on back roads, paths made from wood, with a view
of the City of Olive Trees, a post office outside.

The bison in the distance talk about us.

The season’s first shine, a delicious moment of
serene growing. What’s it like to go cruciferous?
Do you prioritize alternate universes, living for
cakes? Right now, that’s a tough dance of time.