Vitamin D, porcini mushrooms 
soaked in Mediterranean sun lighting 
a coast three hours south of Naples. 

She drapes herself over a flat stone 
rocked by good-tempered swells, embraced 
by a seawall where a lone man plucks mollusks. 

She trades wild fennel for mussels, swaps shellfish 
for an ounce of anchovies flickering a fisherman’s net, exchanges 
an ounce of fish for one potato, a cluster of sun-warmed tomatoes. 

She refuses the produce vendor’s offer to take her 
back up to her room in the cliff village. She prefers walking, needs 
the weight of sun pummeling her head and back, releasing muscle memory. 

Her body memorizes every village alley unraveling 
like ropes from the mother church. She cools her head and heart 
with holy water, lights votives beside St. Michael, climbs 

another staircase into her room rented from a widow. She fires 
the hot plate and single pot, simmers potatoes with fennel, roasts 
tomatoes into sweetness, steams mussels slowly open. 

She wafts the curacao stew out the window 
so the widow knows she’s not starving 
for her husband farming tomatoes in South America. 

Drowsy, she slips into half the matrimonial bed, adjusts 
her body around a cat fattened by pasta, its purring 
stirring the silence of air without sea wind. 

She dreams beneath a chimeruta, amulet of coral rue 
branches blossoming into keys, daggers, moons 
the village women hang above childbeds to ward off the evil eye, 

She awakens, arms crossed beneath her pillow, 
six black hands clambering like spiders beneath her face. She shakes 
herself alert, awaits blood to restore flesh to her fingers. 

She doesn’t mind nightmares. Without darkness, 
how will she know the light of lace 
tablecloths draping the village wall above her window? 

The cloths twine and untwine, a hanging garden 
of point de neige.  Her mother taught her the rhythm of thread, 
how virtuous women look into their doorways as they sew, never out. 

But how will she see inward unless she looks out? She takes 
the stairs down to the deconsecrated church that served as a pre-war 
schoolhouse, and watches the widows opening chairs in the doorway. 

Their closed faces unfurl like schoolgirls 
as they wait for the gate to unlatch, to give them a glimpse 
of themselves reciting poetry beside a window overlooking the sea. 

Scrambling the cliff path, she leans against the crumbling marina 
chapel. Accordion on her knee, her fingers flutter a tarantella, 
her gaze following her song across whitecaps lacing the waves. 

Publisher’s Note:

For additional suggestions on ways to entice the Muses, see Ms. Tekulve’s memoir/essay “Shaking Off the Village: Creating Your Own Writer’s Retreat” in Converse College’s MFA Blog (20 July 2017):
https://conversecollegelowresidencymfa.wordpress.com/2017/07/20/creating-your-own-writers-retreat/

Susan Tekulve’s

newest book is Second Shift: Essays (Del Sol Press). She is the author of In the Garden of Stone (Hub City Press), winner of the South Carolina Novel Prize and a Gold IPPY Award. She’s also published two short-story collections: Savage Pilgrims (Serving House Books) and My Mother’s War Stories (Winnow Press), the latter of which received the 2004 Winnow Press fiction prize. Her web chapbook, Wash Day, appears in the Web Del Sol International Chapbook Series.

Her nonfiction, short stories, and essays have appeared in journals such as Denver Quarterly, The Georgia Review, The Louisville Review, Puerto del Sol, New Letters, and Shenandoah. Selections from her photo essay, “White Blossoms,” appeared in Earth Hymn (Volume 6 of the KYSO Flash Anthology), with the full essay published online in Issue 12 of KYSO Flash.

Ms. Tekulve has received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She teaches in the BFA and MFA writing programs at Converse University.

Author’s website: https://susantekulve.com/