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Artichoke
There is a more thorough juice
I would extract and administer,
could we pinpoint the right grove.
Here, however, deposits
of decent sap glisten,
ignored, left to capture ants
and harden to some future
epoch’s amber. Here,
spurned shoots emerge
whose milk isn’t bitter or poison.
Dull berries hang untouched
that would nourish, even amaze.
It’s not a matter of selling off my things,
mapping out a pilgrimage—
this odd mass on the plate
a flower, in fact, one whose petals
you peel and pull between your teeth
to glean the spare cling of meat
found at the foot of each frond.
Steve Petkus
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