Lemons
are tears
gilded with sunlight,
face-pucker odium
a child might feel
on witnessing
its parents kiss.
What I mean to say
is not just kiss. Caress.
Converse in rabbit's fur
conciliation with each other.
They were strict as stalactites,
tart as walnuts
pickled in brine, figures
encased in icy silence
at the outer limits
of a globe
they gave me
for my seventh
birthday on an outing
to Leigh-on-Sea.
A plastic micro-world
with snow, an igloo, Eskimos,
a huskydog drawn sled I
kept beside the bed
tipped upside down
each night
in hopes
this might dissolve
their arctic freeze and
should the figures come unstuck,
tumble on their plastic heads,
that this might shock
my parents back
to laughing, crying
so their frostbite-silence
no more seared
my ears, and lemons
might be squeezed
sanctified with honey brandy, shaken
stirred as lemon shandy.
Pratibha Castle, an Irish born poet, lives in West Sussex. Widely published in journals and anthologies including Agenda, International Times, IS&T, One Hand Clapping, Spelt, Tears In The Fence, London Grip, High Window and forthcoming in Stand, she has been longlisted and given special mention in numerous competitions including the Bridport Prize, Indigo Press and Welsh Poetry Competitions. Her debut pamphlet A Triptych of Birds & A Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Press 2022) is joined by Miniskirts in The Waste Land (Hedgehog Poetry Press 2023), a young woman’s search for meaning and identity in the Notting Hill and India of the swinging sixties.