THE ARTICHOKE Poem by Elizabeth Cohen

Every time you make someone laugh, you give them a small vacation."

-Joan Rivers

The artichoke is laughing at you, my friend,
The way you are working away, pulling off its clothes,
nibbling at its elbows and knees, like the sex starved, like the lonely,
like the ones whose desire compels them to ridiculous
measures, it's embarrassing. And all of that work, even scraping away
with your bottom teeth, like a Neanderthal version of yourself,
only brings you to this smallest core of intensity,
this little orgasm of flesh that comes in a strange grass skirt
that your mother told you never to eat, her dark warning—
beware that shift of angel hair, the fuzz.

The artichoke always leaves you wanting more,
left in the green mess of its clothes, spread all around
in the places you left them in your rush.
You have eaten, but barely.
The amount of calories you have expended
is at least twice what you have consumed.
Working away at the spiked leaves, narrowing inward for days,
like a Russian nesting doll, directing you straight to the heart,
you discovered is nothing like a heart, but rather a yellow mash-up
of leafmeal concentrate, this tenderness.

The artichoke has a stand up act on Thursday nights
in the market, where it recounts the whole story
of your drooling anticipation, your sweat equity, the whole
of your investment toward the acquisition of that precious,
fibrous heart. Barely a mouthful, then gone.