
This selection, chosen by Managing Editor Krista Cox, is from My Tarantella by Jennifer Martelli, released by Bordighera Press in 2018.
Artichoke Heart
And another of my mother’s lies was the prize
dug from the heart of the artichoke.
And the heart of the artichoke was a dilated cervix.
And the dilated cervix was a single choke-fringed eye.
The eye was the stigma
of the plant protected by thorny leaves and stamen.
I scraped the meaty pith
at the torn-off tips with my milk teeth.
She told me to dip the meat of the leaves in butter: warm, silken.
She said eat all the way to the inside: there was a prize.
But it was soft, the heart, and I imagined
a small plastic baby doll, tiny as my own girl thumb
lying unclothed
on the blue-green velvet.

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