|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Vahni Capildeo |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
GILBERTE SAID LIZARDS
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
GILBERTE SAID LIZARDS In the beginning were the lizards or some thing going digging dark holes to bodily circumference, slanting those routes under sand below windows. Cacti flower in their no-longer-bed, scarlet, starrier than ixora or radio aerial signals. Lizards, she said. II. Terrazzo Infancy was lizard. Lizard was mutability. Mortality was lizard. Delicate eschatology, detachable tail, surface reversibility. Find the frail little-finger-length corpse as you learn to crawl. Reach into a box: a raw stump leaps up, torso sorts itself out. Skate fast, faster – stop, grab a post: fastener-heart jumps cased in your fist; you gasping; eyes bulging; what face your clutch expressed. III. Driveway Why this ixora tall as any other grew by nature sicklier: leathery, sombre foliage sparser along its rigging; scarcer still, unusual, paler, more pointed, off-pink westering flowers more prized than picked, persistent as housewives thinking in lipstick consistent with lives whose positional hazards are hidden deliveries, why from such branches this lizard fell – I don’t know, and brood on, entwisted. IV. Everywhere as nowhere Gilberte brings cocoa-pod eyes, ink milk, lime juice, songs that brink on flippant choice: blink, sink, cling, go, gecko, skink. Orange through blue, punk to decadence, skins show, falling, some sense of death as life’s outward; and so lizard blends. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|