Verses by @DuendeNocturno

The moon is a sucked-out rind
hung on a nail of salt.
Under the lemon trees
the earth goes soft with wings—
not angels, only moths
knuckling the dark like dice.

Someone has left a guitar
face-down in the wet grass,
its belly full of rainwater
and one string humming
a note no hand has touched.
I press my ear to the wood:
it is the sound of a door
closing in a house I never lived in.

Turquoise lemons, unpeeled suns,
ripening on the branch
like small struck bells.
I bite one. The juice runs
down my chin, cold copper,
and the whole orchard tilts—
each tree a green flame
leaning toward a sea
I can hear but cannot see.

My mother's voice, far off,
calling me in for supper.
But the courtyard keeps its hoard:
a bicycle chain that squeaks
in the dark, going nowhere,
and the moths, the moths,
turning the night's slow pages.