The Lemons
José del Valle A stairwell opens onto a rooftop in a foreign city, Bucharest or Mexico City -- and stars, the rhythmic buzz of insects. The suffocated night & its desultory drama! You return from the falafel guy exhausted. Shouts in the street, car horns, sirens, & the gripped cry -- startling at night -- of the hot-water faucet. A woman was beheaded in Yemen, on Turkish television, with a scimitar sword. Her dress was a thousand tiny lemons . . . I couldn’t find the words. Lemons spill from the basket. The woman was from Egypt; her name -- rhymed with bird. |
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About the Author: José del Valle is a Cuban-born writer now working on a sonnet chapbook. His poems and stories have appeared or will appear in Crab Creek Review, Drunk Monkeys, Barnstorm, Frontier Poetry, Carve, The Saranac Review, The Acentos Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Mainichi, Contemporary Haibun Online, The Heron's Nest, the late Jane Reichhold's Lynx, and other small haiku pubs.