Girl,

Girls in Swimming Costume, by Sonia Delaunay – Orphic Cubism – https://www.pinterest.com/pin/21040323235207482/ (More on Orphism at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-orphism.htm)

no one will complain about your massive ass, your wilting tits, the rolls of skin bulging under the pressure of your elastic costume.

Forget your meaty elbows.

Focus on the interaction of color and crowd. You’ll soon understand that geometric  designs, even contrasting ones, can be as moving as sunlight in mid-winter.  Like a tropical Lycra swimsuit, your shape is stunningly loud, gorgeously enormous.

Girl, who told you you ought to feel naked and awkward and ashamed for your display on the pool’s deck? And how dare they?

Inhale the perfume of heavy afternoon, the scents of chlorine and jasmine and cut grass promising a lazy summer.

Girl, you’re all that.

Strut the pool deck’s catwalk.

• Write an ekphrastic prose piece to start a story.  According to the PoetryFoundation (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ekphrasis): An ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art. Through the imaginative act of narrating and reflecting on the “action” of a painting or sculpture, the poet may amplify and expand its meaning. A notable example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which the poet John Keats speculates on the identity of the lovers who appear to dance and play music, simultaneously frozen in time and in perpetual motion:

  What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
  What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
  What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

  Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
  Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
  Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
  Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
  Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
  She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
  For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

  Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
  Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
  And, happy melodist, unwearied,
  For ever piping songs for ever new. . . .