AT HOME FOREIGN
by Clyde Kessler
I checked. Today’s Irish word of the day is líomóid.
Lemon. It sounds bitter, the sample sentence is bitter.
I am still checking the sound, the peeling I bite. It cracks
the sunlight because it’s a dream, and it’s October, squeezed
from Florida. It sounds limmish with some sugar midday.
Or it wants to be a tree sprouting from a voice. Lemon-ish
will trip a jetty, a flock of sandpipers, the low-tide shells.
It means I will have to log off, and walk out to find broken
sand-dollars and pieces of razor-clam wedged lightly into
a sand castle one kid abandoned. It sounds like gulf waters
are heating the Emerald Isle where some moonlight begins,
where the moon’s a lemon slice. You’ll tell me the future
with this lemon rind and some tea leaves. The future holds
the sky across a runway, jets taxiing with darkness. S \