Robbi Nester
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Lemon
I have heard that we are all
just extravagant instruments
of the gustatory urge, made
to transport it to the nearest
source of nourishment—
an orchard of peaches
perhaps, still rock hard nubbins
at the base of embryonic blooms,
or an aquarium stocked with a school
of silver-sided tuna behind bright glass.
I awake in my round bed in the center
of everything that is, the room a yellow
wedge fragrant as summer and as bright.
How, in fact, have I managed to sleep
in all this brightness? On these soft
yellow feathers full of liquid
like a canary without any song?
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Robbi Nester is the author of a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012), with publications in journals including Broadcasted, Qarrtsiluni, Inlandia, Northern Liberties Review, Spark 17 and 18, Philadelphia Stories, Caesura, and others. Her poems have been anthologized in Poetry of Yoga II and Poised for Flight. Essays and reviews have appeared in Switchback and The Hollins Critic, and others. An interview with Judy Kronenfeld appears in Switchback. She is an Executive editor on the new journal Slippage and a volunteer book reviewer on The New York Quarterly.