{"id":96991,"date":"2016-04-14T18:12:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T22:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=96991"},"modified":"2016-05-02T11:07:36","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T15:07:36","slug":"the-artichoke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/14\/the-artichoke\/","title":{"rendered":"The Artichoke"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_96993\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/brooklyn_museum_-_wallpaper_sample_book_1_-_william_morris_and_company_-_page110.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-96993\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-96993\" class=\"wp-image-96993\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/brooklyn_museum_-_wallpaper_sample_book_1_-_william_morris_and_company_-_page110.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/brooklyn_museum_-_wallpaper_sample_book_1_-_william_morris_and_company_-_page110.jpg 693w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/brooklyn_museum_-_wallpaper_sample_book_1_-_william_morris_and_company_-_page110-300x231.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-96993\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">William Morris &amp; Co., <i>Wallpaper Sample Book 1, Artichoke, pattern #359<\/i>, ca. 1915<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>Nin Andrews\u2019s poem \u201cThe Artichoke\u201d appeared in our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/back-issues\/120\" target=\"_blank\">Fall 1991 issue<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><em>Her most recent collection is<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Why-Woman-American-Poets-Continuum\/dp\/1938160614\" target=\"_blank\">Why God Is a Woman<\/a>.<br \/><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The first time I saw it, I thought what an ugly specimen. It looked like Grandma\u2019s bathing cap, grown green and small after all these years. I sliced it open and tasted the pale flesh. And gradually she offered herself up leaf by leaf. In her depth she held a tiny, faded star, a spark that fell in the meteor shower over Frank\u2019s garden. I developed a taste for her expensive style: fancy restaurants, wines by candlelight. Sometimes we stayed inside and read by firelight, drinking the leftover melted butter, wiping the grease on shirt sleeves. I introduced her to friends. She had the heart of a Buddha. Green leaves of flame. Everyone adored her, and she was irresistible. Nightly I grasped her like a seashell and listened to the nothing philosophers spend lifetimes writing about. I became accustomed to the look of a chilled vegetable, kept in the icebox all day. Then one evening there were no leftovers. I went to the grocery store. The sales clerk said artichokes are out of season. This is not San Diego. Still I dreamt of her, dipped in lemony butter, scraped carefully with teeth and sucked, the pale cream of flesh, the tender flower, her skirt held up like a cup, each sip bringing me closer to the moon, the vegetable pearl of her insides where the heart fans out fibrous hairs and waits a last mouthful on her green world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nin Andrews\u2019s poem \u201cThe Artichoke\u201d appeared in our Fall 1991 issue.\u00a0Her most recent collection is\u00a0Why God Is a Woman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":963,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1188],"tags":[773,21968,115,19907,21967,2951,165,13490,21966],"class_list":["post-96991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-archive","tag-artichokes","tag-fall-1991","tag-food","tag-from-the-archive","tag-issue-120","tag-lucky-peach","tag-poetry","tag-prose-poems","tag-vegetables"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Poem: Nin Andrews, \u201cThe Artichoke\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"From our Fall 1990 issue.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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