What to Eat

The way to be a powerful
forty-year-old woman
is not to eat.

The way to be a powerful
fifty-year-old woman
is to order sparkling water.

The way to be a powerful
forty-five-year-old woman
is to cross your arms
and stand back
when the birthday cake
is passed.

To be incredibly
powerful at twenty,
don’t eat.

At thirty, it helps
not to eat.

At sixty, you can be
powerful not eating.

A seventy-year-old
Italian countess orders
only steamed vegetables
and has a fifty-year-old wife.

Actresses interviewed
for magazine profiles
order steak frites, chowder,
beer, pieces of pie, and coffee,
but we know they don’t eat.

A man, a famous actor
in his fifties, sat with
a journalist at his own
coffee table.

He blinked back
a headache and ate
chopped salad with
oil-free vinaigrette.
His decorative girlfriend
wandered past.

To be powerful and artistic
and a man,
it is good not to eat.

What to eat: almonds soaked
in water for twenty minutes,
rice milk, avocado, fish.

I can see the wonderful things
that would happen for me
if I would not eat.

Just like my sister.

She locked herself
in her room and stayed there
for months.

She had her baby,
gave it away,
and went back
to her room.

She ate only boiled
chicken and apples.
She emerged thin

with just enough suffering
legible on her face
to make her truly beautiful.