Kinship’s Thorny Heart
Let’s begin with a poem:
My grandfather teaches me how to flay the heart It was considered ritual in our family. The cleaning of the spiny thistle. A passing of tradition and knowledge. The confidence that one could handle the blade, as well as the spine. Catarina, my grandfather calls, questo ѐ come ѐ fatto. This is how it’s done. And with thorny heart in one hand and blade in the other he teases apart the layers, each leaf nested tight within the next. The spiny thorns grow sharper with progression toward the heart. He left his heart in the sandy soil of his Sicilian hill town home the day he boarded the ship that would take him west across the sea. Sitting at his kitchen table, he passes me the layered heart and gives strong warning: never leave a single thorn in place. A teasing out, a gentle splay. My grandfather’s hand on mine. His shoulder solid for me to lean on. A stone wall built around a small village. ~ Katherine DiBella Seluja
Point of Entry, Katherine DiBella Seluja’s 2023 poetry collection, features a strand of barbed wire on the cover, the points of the single barb jutting prominently. Fifty-three poems follow, each one reminding us what barbed wire symbolizes as a challenge to new arrivals, whether from across our southern border or, as in the case of this author, from the Italy of her ancestors. “My grandfather teaches me how to flay the heart” is among the finest of Seluja’s ancestral poems.
At first encounter, this poem’s title intrigued me—the mystery. What will the grandfather’s lesson be? What kind of heart laid open? What sharp tool employed? Two lines in—“the cleaning of the spiny thistle”—and we have an answer. The poet’s grandfather is teaching her how to prepare an artichoke for the table, how safely to get to the tender heart of “the spiny thistle.”
The surprise here lies in the union of surgical precision and meticulous, loving care, as “with thorny heart in one hand / and blade in the other // he teases apart / the layers, each leaf nested tight within the next.” This heart is well-protected: “the spiny thorns grow sharper.”
Seamlessly, the poem shifts from artichoke to grandfather, from one kind of heart to another: “He left his heart in the sandy soil of his Sicilian hill town home,” bringing artichoke knowledge with him, heart knowledge passed along to his granddaughter, “A teasing out, a gentle splay.”
Kinship breathes at the heart of this poem, strength in a “grandfather’s hand on mine. / His shoulder solid for me to lean on.” And the poet’s closing metaphor for the strength of kinship: “A stone wall built around a small village.”
The poems of Point of Entry are necessary poems, these days more than ever.
About the Author:
Katherine DiBella Seluja is a pediatric nurse practitioner. A resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico, she is the author of a prior book of poems, Gather the Night.
Point of Entry is available here ⇒
Gather the Night is available here ⇒