A bouquet of prickles and stings:
you weigh each thistled scale one
by one, drizzle with euphemisms:
creamy, nutty, fleshy, green.

What will happen when I've gifted
all my nettles away? What's left?
Steamed flower to scoop clean out.
Edible, pressure-cooked heart.

You're plucky and buttery,
ruthless in your mathematics
of extractions and subtractions.
A Fibonacci series of unpetaling.

(Can you squeeze a lemon on me?)

Seismic shifts, and things unhinge:

Relax with ice and slit the resistant
muscle, or steam open the shell.
Do not pry, and do not suck.
(The ice, the knife, the glove . . . )

Earthworms rise to the surface,
throb and bake in the fierce light.
Mole rats head-drum their portents.
Catfish thrash in a tumult of silt.

O harmonic tremor, o earthquake!

O, sweet giant!

O beautiful tsunami!

This is fricking gorgeous -- would you consider submitting it to a literary journal? (I'm the new poetry editor -- pls. email me at inktastesbitter (yahoo) if interested...)

Exquisite and powerful.