I am wondering whether you

would rather see the pile of papers in my filing box, papers that I need to go through and make sense of, insurance claims, etc., that reach all the way up to suicidal Virginia Woolf's nose:

or,

see what I made myself for lunch today, smoked lemon pepper salmon with cream cheese on a toasted bagel, positioned in front of hydrangeas and roses?

or

listen to the poet Frank O'Hara read An Airplane Whistle (after Heine) which is not from his collection titled Lunch Poems.

Emotional Eating

For once, let go of cupcakes, of bread slathered in butter, a screw-it-all I'll just have fries sprinkled with Parmesan. Scrub a sweet potato and roast in a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes. While it's cooking, cut up a bunch of good feta cheese into cubes and throw them into a bowl with cherry tomatoes and olives. Chop up some parsley and some chives and add a bit of ground cumin and a bit of ground cardamon. Hell, add a bit of za' atar  if you have it. Add a few tablespoons of olive oil and squeeze a half of a lemon over the whole mess. Sprinkle some salt on that, and let it sit and marinate until the potato is soft. Split the potato and spoon the salad over it. Eat it for lunch while listening to this and for once in your crazy life feel virtuous.




**recipe adapted from The Wednesday Chef

Lunch

The Mazda sits at the EZ Lube getting stroked and stripped as clean as a whistle. The bougainvillea climbs orange to the blue sky. I sit at the cafe next to the lube stop with my fried eggs and polenta, an orange wedge flagged by parsley. My cup runneth over with coffee.