New Poetry by Joan Leotta

Appetite for Mulberries 

Our guide, Hassan, hurried us off the

Bus into the factory

to initiate our tour

“Turkish Silk Carpets

from Start to Finish.”

Hung on hallway walls,

photographs showed

tightly wound, doll-sized

tennis balls, resting on

mulberry leaves. Hassan

explained, “Those are  

silkworm larvae cocoons.

They are happy to

stay and spin on their

favorite food,

mulberry leaves.”

In the next room

large photos

displayed their fate:

cocoons being dipped

into boiling water,

hands discarding those

boiled larvae once alive within,

slim fingers unraveling cocoons

into skeins of silk thread.

In the next room

behind glass windows

we observed real women

spinning, dying silk,

weaving threads into intricate designs.

At our last stop

towers of silk rugs

rose up from polished wood floors.

Salespeople circled like moths.

“Once only for the Pasha, now for you,”

Hassan whispered into his mic.

But all I could see was worms, larvae

whose last days were spent

feasting on their favored food

in ignorance of what was to come,

blinded to their fate by

their great appetite for mulberries.

- © Joan Leotta 2022

Joan Leotta, of Calabash, NC, plays with words on page and stage. In addition to her ten published books, her varied writings have appeared or are forthcoming, in Ekphrastic Review, Pinesong,, Brass Bell, Verse Visual, anti-heroin chic, Silver Birch, Ovunquesiamo, Verse Virtual, Poetry in Plain Sight, and others. She is a 2021 Pushcart nominee and  received Best of Micro Fiction in 2021. In early  2022, she was named a runner up in the Frost Foundation Poetry Competition. Her chapbook, Feathers to Stone , which includes the poem, Sycamore Roots, is scheduled for publication at the end of 2022 from Main Street Rag. She performs tales featuring food, family, nature, and strong women.