David Adger
In April she’d ruffle
through freckled pink stalks
and skirts of poisonous green
for just the right one.
We weren’t to touch the bone-
handled knife she used to cut
through a thousand sour shreds
in one crisp shoot.
On the scarred formica
of older Aprils,
she’d divide the stem,
in three parts,
and unlid a bowl
of casting sugar and lacy glass.
We’d stir the fat wands
until each was crusted
with sweet dust,
so we could bear, or almost bear,
to bite, like her knife,
to the sharpness beneath.
David Adger is a Scottish academic working in London. Aside from academic books and papers in linguistics, he’s published prose non-fiction in Nautilus and Grand Magazine.
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