Cleanse Diets Exposed

January and everyone I know
who regrets
all they ever ate and drank–
which includes everyone I know–
is on a cleanse diet. Like the one person
who never gets the flu, I though I was immune
since each magazine’s Earnest Diet
begins with a No-Coffee rule,
the whim of a madman.
But all those photos next to the recipes
finally captured me too—
dark purple radicchio, orange squash, lemon yellow,
bright green leaves I can’t pronounce the names of–
It’s marketing genius on their part,
all these fruits and vegetables,
to look the way they do
when our eyes are starved
hungry for red, craving green,
yearning to be filled
in this winter world cleansed of color.