Iguana Iguana

Caylin Capra-Thomas

• Verlag: Deep Vellum Publishing
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781646051762
• Thema: Literature
• Thema: American Poetry

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 "…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".

PASSAGE

It’s 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

you’ve 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 haven’t seen.

I.

WINDOW

So many friends I’ve 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, I’m leaving. I’ve gone out and left

the stove on for hours at a time, many times. Somehow

nothing’s 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 heaven—

the thing they waited for, that is. The town

was not heaven but was also—sometimes,

when I think about it—not Earth.

Some other, nowhere place. Alien in its grey

and beige, its salted streets and stone walls.

Some days I’d climb to the top of the road

to the old farm where my father saw his collie’s

ghost. And I’d stand there waiting to see Franz,

thinking, It’s true we all come back, everything,

everyone returns. And when I saw nothing

but late winter’s gold lick the forsaken trees

and some schoolmates tool by in an old Saturn

ringed around the rims with snow, I knew

I’d been abandoned by something, that Saint

So-and-So was sleeping, forever sleeping—leave

her be—and 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 they’re 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? It’s near 2 a.m.

and you’re 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 tree’s submission

but the consequence of being rooted.

One place will ...