Of lemons and skin and teacups
let’s flay it open: find the tea
in tear and moan in lemon
the obsession in the one obsessed
with sectioning the body into inside and
the “wordless thing” that covers it
—derma casing cutis hull shell parch-
ment vellum peel film fell—
let’s ask how different this severing
and fall: the flesh of man and fruit
in muted color in a teacup full
of bathwater and salt and what mistakes
as memory: a stranger’s hands
holding my legs together:
a lemon wedged into my gums
as acid sponge absorbing all
that wild and childhood screaming
let’s forget that this fixed nothing:
that the bitter porous rind was skin
and always mine that brewed
too long tea curdles on the tongue
that lemons are less fruit
than failed or failing memory:
those skinless strangers inside
cup-fulls of tears steeped down
to tea
