To be a lemon is to commit

to things being real and of their name

to be a lemon is to cake in the bed

a stitch in the tongue

 

To be a lemon takes commitment

a lemon says that chair is a

chair in and of itself a chair

separated by space

a discrete object

the chair does not relate or appear to the field

amorphous its subatomic conscience

waving to one desk one bed

in a moving pointillism

lemon morgue

a dirge for the mid-life

the chair chooses a lemon

to be a lemon says not a fish

but do chairs dream to be graceful

or what is the architecture of wilderness

there in the light glass horizon

breaking – effluvia

the present & uncontrolled

or

the uncontrolled present

how effluvia drifts in chaos

lessons from dust

to be a lemon is to say the sky

is no longer an elephant

or just sometimes on a birthday

peel the lemon rind

unfurled the gloaming is a show of the real

Melissa Eleftherion grew up in Brooklyn. A high school dropout, she went on to earn advanced degrees in film production, English literature, and library science. She is the author of huminsect (dancing girl press, 2013), prism maps (dusie kollektiv, 2014), Pigtail Duty (dancing girl press, 2015), and several other chapbooks and fragments. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, Delirious Hem, Entropy, Manifesting the Female Epic, Negative Capability, Open Letters Monthly, So to Speak, Tinderbox, & TRUCK. She works as a librarian with Mendocino County Libraries, and created, developed, and currently manages the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange. Follow her @apoetlibrarian & www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.