The Reluctant Vegetarian - extracts from a series

fig n (1) inebriate
jam in a chestnut
squirrel pelt;
(2) siamese tongues
shucked from
year-old limes;
adj (3) the tang
of coins
in a warm pocket;
n (4) hot pigeon blood
in an acorn cup;
(5) an absent
father clutching
her empty coat
or the last
phone call; (6) certain
looseness round
the heart; adv
(7) the way
you’d smile
at the kids, if
grandma had died.

 

raspberry n
(1) horse strawberry
cinched with
goat sweat; (2) pulp
crumbs drenched
in intimate
blood; adv (3) the way
children teach
adults how to
eat again; n (4) jelly
polyps spiked
with hawthorn; (5)
cat-gut pastilles
tapestried on stab
wounds; (6) the puckered
lips of car-crash
victims; adj
(7) the wretchedness
of the past tense;
n (8) an embolism
and its silent
drift in my
slipstream.

 

blueberry
n (1) owl pellet
swelled with
fairy bile; (2) goose
tumour stitched
with burdock; (3) jar
of seal eyes, lustrous
when wet; (4) a mesa’s
moonless indigo;
(5) blue Cambodian
skulls in a punnet;
v (6) to ash
the darkened skin
with chalk; adj (7)
the tight baby eye
of a teenage heart;
adv (8) how innocence stirs
in the mouth first;
adj (9) the taste
of a bitten tongue or
a wrecked planet.

 

broad bean n
(1) pygmy frog
of livid green
squeezed
from Cleopatra’s
skin; adj (2) the easing
out of eggs
from warm boiled
shell; (3) curves
drawn by pen tied
pendulums that swing
three-sixty
arcs and turns
untroubled by
impossible shapes;
n (4) Ethiopian kidneys
on a dusty step
take colour with
the first rains;
adv (5) how goodness
builds the
smallest selves
and mines
their love; adj
(6) mint oil
on finger-tips
to taste by
moonlight; (7) scent
of lime grass
scythed by
thumbnail; (8) the
ordinariness
of contentment.

 

parsnip
n (1) sasparella
root of blunted
cream; (2) old-lady
marrow dripping
from a cave roof;
(3) fibre left
from grass
while cow dreams
lace their flesh
with suet; adj (4) hot
pastry fat
on sweetened
autumn’s skin;
(5) mature flesh
skilled in pleasure;
(6) wooden pegs
that pin the
church’s meadow
floor; adv (7) the sinewed
spur of marrow
nudging in like
faith; adj (8) how
worthiness tastes —
moth-balled,
ancient, difficult.

 

tomato n (1)
warm sorbet
of the tongue’s
pink; (2) spangle
of the vinegar’s
sun; adj (3) poised,
tension in a sphere
of artful postwar
conversation; n
(4) milk-red eye
of Hiroshima’s
child rotating
for her chichi;
adv (5) father’s
Stasi salt, as
slaked by burnt
liqueur of orange;
n (6) the slit skin
scalp of a
Vietcong tunnel
tour; adj (7) the
schadenfreude
of a pip between
the teeth; (8) relief,
like the moment
of evacuation.