Lemon Appearances


lemon eyeball

no pupil

stinging yellow blindness

*

the lemon moon exacts
her sour gravity

*

slice after slice
of round yellow
cathedral windows

*

the half lemon in the kitchen
on the chopping board

is a yellow bell

it has no clapper yet waits
for the chef to ring

out its juice

*

the nipple of the lemon's end
& the lemon's cutting milk

*

the lemon leaf
is a light green dry tongue
beginning to curl

the dark lemon stalk is sore
where it connects

with the acidic yellow womb

*

a giant lemon
five times a poet's size smells
as sharp as a star

*

an orange & a lemon & a lime
are not one

an orange & a lemon
are not one

a lime & a lemon
are not one

a lemon
is one

*

the famous literary magazine
made a terrible mistake
her final poem
should not have been entitled

Melons

*

is it a lemon's roundness
or a lemon's yellow

is a lemon a sun
or a whole solar system

perhaps perhaps
but for sure

it is in homemade lemonade
that childhood is yellow bubbles

*

her ear fills with round fizzy ringing

it's like the zing of listening
to an old tune just born

it is the bells of St Clements

*

the lemon in the fruit bowl is waiting

curled up in the lemon
a shiny yellow baby is waiting

inside the shiny yellow baby
is bright clear yellow blood

waiting

*

beware the yellow knight

with his sour stare
& sharp lance

he shows no clemency
for he has stolen

The Yellow Grail

*

a boy cuts open a lemon
pushes his tongue in
thinks of lips & salt & kissing

but freshly shod snorting lemon horses gallop
across his red tongue

determined vigorous lemon climbers
with bright yellow crampons
quickly crunch their way up his red tongue

lemon soldiers with yellow bayonets
& microscopic yellow bullets
unroll yellow barbed wire over his red tongue

*

Little Yellow Riding Hood
raising her blond eyebrows
says to her wolf

my what large lemons you have

*

how the artist has captured
the lemon on canvas

yet without yellow

*

it was lemon rind
shining in sunlight
that reminded her

*

he holds the lemon in his palm
its scent a rising precise mist
he thinks of clean trajectories
of mathematics fresh & citric
he thinks of launching a rocket

so he can walk on the lemon's surface

*

the lemon nun
with her yellow face
seeming to give only yellow away

if squeezed will squirt
her prayer in a shrill voice

*

imagine a lemon menstruates
imagine the colour

*

if she could stitch together
a dress of lemon zest

then at the ball
even if that dress in places exposed

her shape & skin

she could nevertheless
keep her zing

a secret