LEMON,
EGG,
BREAD
Laura ELLIOTT
When you had started painting classyou had to do a lemon still life and
you graduated to a lemon and bread
still life and you graduated to a
lemon, egg, bread still life and this
was not my idea of painting.
—Eva HESSE
You loved the surreal
the song
the edible
and, above all,
bread
—Maggie O’SULLIVAN, Elegy
dross segmented
artichoke hearts
itchy anus and
horror at
the concept
of stones put
inside girls by
men who went
to prison or
of speaking to
your father inside
the clock tower
about robert
mapplethorpe
and I do not
mean his pistils
°
everybody’s washing-up
pile is sculptural everyone's
abandoned dining table
glued together is an event
like the hollow grey egg
of an 83rd birthday
°
but old men
eating alone
make me sad
as a wedge
°
less interested in
my interests more
interested in making
lists and watching
the solar-powered
crystal lotus in
the window of the
furniture shop
rotate white
hot inedible
°
but to fill in the gaps
my god
who has the time
let the land snails
kern all over
°
more
or no
less
salt
forever
°
connotations of
purple may include
menopausal
women's hair
moist muffin
chambers
shiny sharkskin
suits blood
look at this finger
I scratched
bleach into it
Laura ELLIOTT is a poet and library worker in London. Her work has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies, including The White Review,Poetry London, Blackbox Manifold, & Clinic IV. She co-edits the poetry publishing experiment para·text with Angus Sinclair (@paratextual / paratext.co.uk).