I’m doing one of these a day until the end of April. To send it, copy the permalink or the image file link into an email, tweet, Facebook DM, etc. — or just download and make free with the image.
Dave Bonta (bio) often suffers from imposter syndrome, but not in a bad way — more like some kind of flower-breathing dragon, pot-bellied and igneous. Be that as it may, all of his writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For attribution in printed material, his name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact him for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).
WAR OF THE ORANGES WON’T RHYME
Note the odd nexus
of scurvy war and citrus:
Proto-Indo-European nek-es
Internecine’s root of death
appears in nectarine –
a bloodless, fuzzfree
ascorbic saviour
Wonderful, Julia! I had to look up the etymology to get everything you were saying here — the American Heritage Dictionary has a brief essay.
Even as a child, I knew that nectarines were the most sinister of the ever-suspect stone fruits.
I’ll grant you that the smooth skin is suspicious, like men who shave their heads to hide their baldness.
:-) I enjoyed this very much.
Thanks, Dale.
Ha! I think ‘bloody internecine conflict’ is about right.
Oh yeah? The competition among academic poets reaches its apogee here in the U.S., I gather, but poets everywhere are a contentious lot. Countries with lots of poets, such as Yemen and Somalia, are not famed for pacifism.
Hmmm. This might finally explain why April is the cruelest month. (grin)
Hey, maybe so!