by Ian Stuart

Walnuts

Plump as plums, clustered among leaves,
they hang in a green shade.
Pick one. Peel back the husk and find
a shell there, pocked and wrinkled
like some distant world.

You’ll need a knife. Just press 
your blade against the lateral line
then prise the halves apart
and there, in a nutshell
is a brain.

Packed tight into an inch-wide skull
two waxy hemispheres
each ridged and swollen
into lobes and clefts
and each the image of the other.

Remove the nut and place it on your tongue.
Dark and resinous, the taste
stirs shadows in your own brain shell
of something long forgotten – 
garnered sunlight
the slow insistent pulse of growth.

***

Man hollowed out wooden leg to smuggle iguanas

I would have got away with it
but for the noise –
claws scratching at the wood
those genteel coughing sounds
iguanas make.

“One moment, sir”
I knew then I was done for.
“If you could come this way…”

In my skivvies, standing on one leg,
I watched him spring the secret trapdoor –
out they tumbled – all my little darlings
skittering across the polished floor.
Tiny dinosaurs in Terminal Two.

It’s said that they escaped into the drains
and flourished there…

One day they will return, Godzilla-like,
crunching Jumbo jets to junk
between their claws, reeking of jet juice 
and a thousand rotting airline meals.

Image: Photo by Luca Volpe on Unsplash