On A Diet

Eat all you want

but don’t swallow it.

—Archie Moore

The ruth of soups and balm of sauces

I renounce equally. What Rorschach saw

in ink I find in the buttery frizzle

in the sauté pan, and I leave it behind,

and the sweet peat-smoke tang of bananas,

and cream in clots, and chocolate. I give

away the satisfactions of food and take

desire for food: I’ll be travelling light

to the heaven of revisions. Why be

adipose: an expense, etc.,

in a waste, etc.? Something like

the body of the poet’s work, with its

pale shadows, begins to pare and replace

the poet’s body, and isn’t it time?