"A Spring Issue", by Sarah Dunning Park

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A Spring Issue

By Sarah Dunning Park

Standing in line
at the grocery checkout
my eye slides over your glossy cover

and I imagine kicking back
  in a quiet room at home,
  sunlit air from the window
  fluttering your bright pages.

I would quietly feed on
  your inspiring concepts
  for dining al fresco, plus
  one hundred great ways
  to bring back the romance
  (and still get dinner on the table).

Actually dinner
  is burning in the oven
  while I fitfully pore over
  page after page
  of simulated perfection,
  my brain racked by the effort
  of mentally tallying these things
  I surely need:

a battery of skin-care
  potions to charm my face
  into a pristine, even poreless
  surface and a new wardrobe
  that flatters my assets
  while suiting my age
  (as well as resisting stains)
  and that Viking range
  with granite countertops
  where I’ll roast local lamb
  or raptly dice Vidalias
  at the end of each day
  dedicated to meditative yoga,
  to targeting and toning and
  releasing stress and toxins-

not to mention toxic emotions,
  rising to a high boil
  with my ravenous heart,
  now bleating for a taste of the flawless
  (which I think I’ve just beheld
  her within your pages).

Little can I do
  but dish up our lenten meal
  (peas and potatoes)

and then I will sacrifice you,
  sham of the perfect,
  to the trash, sprinkling you
  with the crumbs of tonight’s
  charred fish sticks.

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(Found while enjoying the new-ish blog my friend Jodie Byrne is a contributor to, The Sham of the Perfect. Check it out. Soak it in. Let it go. I love this. Gonna treat myself to the poet's book, "What It Is Is Beautiful".)