Food and Culture at Raven

Taboo

by Tamara Kaye Sellman

The fruit has been quartered
for me by the waitress.

It winks green-eyed at me
in a classic culinary dare,

knowing too well how spoon
tips are rendered useless

against its loden velveteen
armor. Bite me, it smiles.

I pick up one quarter, sink
teeth hungrily, attract

the black-seed stare of a man
two seats down the counter

who’s turned green over
this cannibal’s errand—

my having eaten, without
flinching, the skin of a kiwi.

Former cookbook editor Tamara Kaye Sellman is a publishing professional in Bainbridge Island, WA. In 2003, her work appears in Quarterly West, Poetry Midwest, ByLine, Tattoo Highway, Outsider Ink, Zacatecas, PoetsAgainstTheWar.org, MOTA: Courage (anthology, Triple Tree Publishing, ed. Karen Joy Fowler), and Food Poems (anthology, Wright State University, ed. David Lee Garrison). She is also the recipient of a Pushcart Prize
nomination. She edits MARGIN (http://www.magical-realism.com) and compiles the free speech digest, Candleflame.
This poem was previously published as part of the Bainbridge Island Poetry Corners project, May 2002.