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The Friday Poem on 10/03/23

According to Greek and Roman mythology, lemons were the dowry of Hera, the bride of Zeus, who kept them hidden away in a garden at the far end of the earth. Rebecca Ferrier’s poem ‘The Dowry of Hera’ takes the tang and the taste of this zesty citrus fruit as a starting point and riffs on it in a really unusual way. It is oblique, intriguing, and evocative, hinting at some past loss or hardship. We like its tone – it is confident, allusive and generous.

The Dowry of Hera

I am training myself in happiness through lemons:
think well, dart citrus to tongue, take joy’s embalmment as sweet lemonade.
Between an avenue of knuckle is a pip I squeeze from joint
and plant to yellow the outside. It grows. I think on its skin to my skin to other skin:
how I can trace all the lemons ever held back to a single lemon 
better than I can map people. If I tried, I could taste a lemon tree’s heart. 
I would do this even for an enemy. Take her tang 
down generations to man’s root. You see, I want to love you 
enough that your ancestors know their pain was worth it.

Rebecca Ferrier‘s prose has been published in New Gothic Review, Northwords Now and Gutter, while her poetry has featured in Lighthouse, Word West Revue (forthcoming) and Anthropocene (forthcoming). Her pamphlet on chronic illness, A Diet of Leeches, was shortlisted for the inaugural Disabled Poets Prize 2023.

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