Anatomy of the Lemon: Leathery Escarp

Terry Trowbridge

Leathery escarp. Leathery escarp.

Someone labeled the outer skin with an editorial.

Were they critical, or were they vegan victorious?

Or did Alfred label Batman’s yellow oval around his leathery totem?

 

The toy plastic football fit for my kindergarten hand

was bright orange, and so light, a reminder

that it was just a toy, not a real football, which was equipment,

but my first-grade football could have been a lemon,

with throwable heft, long-bomb lemon balm with a spiral twist.

Leathery as the old pigskin. Seamlessly self-sewn on its stem.

 

Those pores that scent the fingers with the smell of yellow

are as rough as fingerprints. Do they feel and grip,

the fruit being the perfect shape opposite of opposable thumbed hands;

why wouldn’t lemon skin be tactile, sensitive, uniquely identifiable?

Leathery like a glove with a glove’s own leathery prints.

Do the forensics team call a glove the criminal’s leathery escarp left behind?

When they smell cleaner, do they smell erasure, do they smell lemon acid scrubbings

smears of human oils away in a game of pores-versus-pores?

 

Leathery like the Devil, then?

The leathery escarp of the culprit fruit?

Sliced, it is a spotlight against the sky,

against the prison escapee.

On the lemon rind, the leathery wings

that promise a sting in every cut

in exchange for innocence.

 

A child’s fruit for comic books and football games.

An adult’s fruit for twist endings.