Explore O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press offerings on Amazon.
Subscribe to the O:JA&L YouTube channel.
Become an O:JA&L Member through Patreon.
Chris Pellizzari
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

Your orange tree.
Muscular arms offer fruit you try to drink, but the juice runs down your chin as old women on their way to church prod you with their canes.
Your Gypsy woman.
She blows in the ear of the soldier who will shoot you a cold wind from the snow on the mountain, while slipping her blacksmith scolding iron hand down his trousers melting the pistol’s hammer.
Your lizard.
Do you see your death in his eyes or tail? Heads, death? Tails, immortality?
Your room at the Rosales house.
You hide here from the Fascists, a padded room with no furniture, but you bang your head against a piano for a Mozart lullaby to seduce the hounds to sleep.
Your Salvador Dali.
He melts a clock over your head and the long finger and thumb holding the egg also holds your testicles, feeling for lumps of dead oranges.
About the writer:
Chris Capitanio is a poet living in Illinois.
Image: Naranjas y Limones by Julio Romero de Torres (1874-1930). Oil and tempera on canvas. 104 x 74 cm. 1927. Public domain.