The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: "Closer to Where We Began" by Lisa Richter

“It Was Not an Apple”

she ate but a blood orange,
whose burgundy juice chanted dark requiems
to her sun-brushed breasts
and baked clay thighs,

which sang of knowledge
not yet arcane, jelly of quivering cells,
foretelling ice, flint, flame, mushrooms sprouting
in early cattle dung.

To unlock the fruit, she had to push
her thumbs into it, deep into chambers
hosting secret elixirs and recipes for
embalming.

When she reached the juice,
she knew she was naked
and unafraid.

This selection comes from the collection Closer to Where We Began, available from Tightrope Books. Order your copy here.

Lisa Richter‘s poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, The Malahat Review, The Puritan, The Literary Review of Canada, and The Minola Review, amongst other publications. She is the author of a chapbook, Intertextual (Pooka Press, 2010), and was longlisted for the 2015 CBC Poetry Prize. Her first full-length collection of poems, Closer to Where We Began, is now available from Tightrope Books. She lives, writes, and teaches English as a Second Language in Toronto.

Heather Knox is the author of the poetry collection Dowry Meat (Words Dance Publishing) and the forthcoming YA fiction series Vampire Wars (EPIC Escape). Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, [PANK], decomP magazinE, Word Riot, Thrush Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Heather currently teaches online for The Poetry Barn and Southern New Hampshire University, and serves as Managing Editor for The Wardrobe.