The Fridges of Famous Poets
Curated by Katharine Ogle Associate Editor   Rilke’s Lemon A lemon came home from the grocery, nestled in the net bag with the rest of the produce, but he hadn’t bought it. How did you get here? Rilke puts the lemon in the fridge next to the lemon juice. Someone has cut a slice from it. Like the corpse of a saint, the lemon remains fresh and sweet-smelling for a suspiciously long time. Rilke thinks: Like a girl almost or like the refrigerator gremlins who eat electricity to stay alive, you have to learn to live with longing. You just have to learn to live with longing. Every waking moment, the lemon is rolling slowly looking for the fridge within the fridge that it knows is there. –Sarah Kathryn Moore All’s Despite (or, Paul Celan’s Fridge) shellacked and scrubbed green, yawning fingernail caught in a sunken jamb, wailing tin mantras; color of fresh- puckered mint on a rubberrack next to two carrots ocher-stain blush in so styrene a crypt (o and who levered …