Dandelion
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Erasure of Emily Dickinson’s “[The Dandelion’s pallid tube]” with images from the National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Collection
1998
—Tuckahoe, NY
Cyanotype by Anna Atkins, 1854
IL MOLO: 44.38″ N 9.03″ E
after Divya Victor
We are eating focaccia on the sea wall. We are saying that the tide is higher than it was when we were six. We are saying something about the frogs & the cicadas & we are saying we hope their songs never stop. We remember our clothes hanging from the line extending out from Nonna’s kitchen window. We remember collecting chocolate Easter eggs wrapped in bright pinks, lime greens, oranges, and that the next day the pope died. We had gathered around Nonna’s boxy TV as a family awaiting the selection of the new holy father.
A kayaker makes his way out into the choppy waves. Our fingers are coated in olive oil and salt as we finish breakfast. We are recognized and we are used to it—the famous American twins have returned home. Come sta vostro papà, someone is asking us. Dov’é la vostra famiglia, Come sta vostro papà. We will have pasta col pesto for dinner, we are saying, & frutti di mare the day after, listing meal after meal for every answer to questions like these.
Livia Meneghin
Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Honey in My Hair and the Sundress Publications Reads Editor. She earned a Writers’ Room of Boston Poetry Fellowship, Breakwater Review’s 2022 Peseroff Prize, and Second Place in The Room Magazine’s 2023 Poetry Contest. Her writing has found homes in Gasher, Thrush, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Emerson College, where she now teaches writing and literature. She is a cancer survivor.
OSMOSIS PRESS 