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Iguana Iguana
Caylin Capra-Thomas
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Iguana Iguana
Caylin Capra-Thomas
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About This Book
Alive to the beauty and anxiety of new worlds and people, Iguana Iguana imagines a tough and tender soundtrack for tumbleweeds in search of roots. Recursive, deliberate, and as adaptive as their titular lizard, these poems invite us to listen so as to better hear "ā¦the sweet shriek / of those far-off trains you suspect are coming / to claim you. To lay open the hills you haven't seen." Caylin Capra-Thomas writes towards understanding the strangers we meet and knowing the stranger within. In doing so, she maps a blueprint for "lay[ing] into the world / like it's good enough".
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PASSAGE
Itās hard to tell what will be important. The river
is high again and so are the teenagers encrusting
its edges, beady-eyed and black-clad, sideways
glancing, suspicious as crows. Each in the cluster
a dead version of yourself: one scratching peace
signs into the dirt with her toe. One singing
ugly. One poking a drowned worm, expressionless.
And you stand apart, head cocked, remembering
that the French for to happen also means to arrive,
that sometimes we say deceased when we mean
departed. The obscure chorus of your own life
keeps cawing into the diamond dark, under the roaring
of each body you inhabit, the waters, the others
youāve flocked to, even when all you can hear
are your own hard swallows, or the sweet shriek
of those far-off trains you suspect are coming
to claim you. To lay open the hills you havenāt seen.
I.
WINDOW
So many friends Iāve caught beautiful, not knowing it,
cursing me in the snow or fumbling shirtless through
cabinets for the last sachet of tea. Their petulance
an unlikely ornament. It is easier, I suppose, to wrap
myself in myself. The root of us, alone a lot. So I cook
near-naked by the kitchen window. I try so hard
to get caught. But nobody looks up while they walk
home to whatever awaits them. Not me, not this soup
of lemon and leftover stock. Perhaps the television, left on
since morning, the newscast too loud, never-ending.
Perhaps a note that says, Iām leaving. Iāve gone out and left
the stove on for hours at a time, many times. Somehow
nothingās caught fire. But I know how luck is finite,
quantifiable, and this knowledge is an under-the-skin
feeling, like being watched. Like being told how lovely
I look, bathed in the light of my own life, burning.
PATRON SAINTS
The people were not cruel, but the town was.
In its heart, it was. In its heart of mills and falls
and wind, it flogged itself, its people, who loved
God and prayed to So-and-So, patron saint of
whatever. Everyone there waiting for something
that would never return. Some had waited so long,
they forgot what it was and decided to call it heavenā
the thing they waited for, that is. The town
was not heaven but was alsoāsometimes,
when I think about itānot Earth.
Some other, nowhere place. Alien in its grey
and beige, its salted streets and stone walls.
Some days Iād climb to the top of the road
to the old farm where my father saw his collieās
ghost. And Iād stand there waiting to see Franz,
thinking, Itās true we all come back, everything,
everyone returns. And when I saw nothing
but late winterās gold lick the forsaken trees
and some schoolmates tool by in an old Saturn
ringed around the rims with snow, I knew
Iād been abandoned by something, that Saint
So-and-So was sleeping, forever sleepingāleave
her beāand whatever I was waiting for lived
somewhere else and I was never coming back.
FOR MY TWENTY-YEAR-OLD SISTER ON MY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY
Nobody knows what theyāre doing, Maddie.
Sometimes I can see, as if from above, the wave
of each fresh generation gathering, drawing
more of itself into itself and looming, perilous
and untenable, above the lower water.
The collective breath of newborns responsible
for the atmospheric shift. Freaky shit. The morning
shows call it sweater weather. I call it death knell
with elbow patches. Best case scenario, I say,
how do you think the world will end? Itās near 2 a.m.
and youāre walking uphill in Worcester in a silver
dress, shivering like the moon must shiver
in her lockstep tidal darkness. Know me, sister.
I bequeath you the decade between us. It was
useless and warm, like a house party.
Like a house party, I spent it in the kitchen,
counter-top-perched, glittering so lightly
no one noticed my gravity. I felt like I knew
something then. It was mostly a feeling. Best case
scenario? you say. Dinosaurs return for a feeding.
CROSSCUT
So many girls are trying to tell you this:
the line between the hurt body and the body
that hurts is razor-thin and traversable
like the trail we carved into the mountain
to climb beyond the snow line and slip off.
Pain, the happening. Pain, the procedure.
Firewood is not the treeās submission
but the consequence of being rooted.
One place will ...