‘Every time I make lemon curd’ by Madeline Clark

Every time I make lemon curd

organize the fridge, wake up
before 9am, consider running
a marathon, I start wanting

cigarettes & threesomes, 

keep googling 
places I won’t go to.

This city terrifies me. 
I am desperate
to be told 
what to do

but drop every hand
that tries to move me.

When did I become
insatiable? I’ve been

starving 

myself

anyway.

My body, ignored
all winter, 
is thawing.


          

Madeline Clark is a writer based in Portland, OR. She received her B.A. in Creative Writing from Bates College. Her work appears in The Columbia Review. She co-runs a poetry substack, “Good Grief,” and, in 2022, co-launched a weekly poetry workshop for incarcerated women at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility through the non-profit Poetic Justice.