Other Yellow Fruit

 

The core of a lemon had sealed

all wounds. I played the piano

at the old folks home.

 

Infancy was rocked like

nightfall splashing through

 

the open window. I was laughing at

the separation of a larva and his fly–

 

cut out from underneath the

same maple tree. The sky bled

 

in deep colors and I was strong.

I, the grand daughter–

 

the wine dark ocean spilling over

the mountaintop, am now a chrysalis

 

standing at the Memorial of the

Murdered Jews of Europe.

 

The place whispers say my name

and think of me. I think of little

 

army men simulating war. I think

of them losing thought. I am

 

swiftly brought to kneeling

in the trenches. 6 raw beanstalks

 

provoke the angry heat of the day.

Blocks sit on pomegranates

​

skinning the broken language.

My grandfather’s name is

 

etched into the granite powder of the

memorial. An unsettled dream then

 

comes knocking from the grave.

The stalks gravitate to the witching hour.

 

The witch howls. A soldier is molting

in the socket of sound, an intercourse

 

between the grainy severed arm—

long limber in green, and the Earth

 

that did not want this.The weasel is

unburying the air, holding

 

the blood and the soldier of which

he is still very much a part of.

 

6 black birds dissolve into winter’s icy traps.

The place is not interesting for only death

 

and its ordinary boundaries. 6 winters

kill the men of Bergen-Belsen.

 

6 posthumous drugged beetles.

The cow moos and flies up the nostril.

 

French border police molest the crossing

of thin wasting prisoners and the preacher

 

wanting change. Grandfather’s name is

resurrected. Church’s heavy eyelids

 

fall down onto God. The clock has rotated

into a new beginning.

 

 

Nicole Flaherty Kimball is an emerging poet from Utah, USA. Nicole’s work is published or forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, Sunspot Literary Journal, Mom Egg Review, Club Plum Literary Magazine, Book of Matches Lit and several others. She was the recipient of the Pat Richards and Joe Beaumont Scholarship and is pursuing a Bachelor's Degree at Utah Valley University.

​

​

​