Twenty Questions with a Philosopher Iguana
When I Look Up an Iguana Turns His Head Away From the Sun
He asks: What is beginning? Something I never notice, like my nails growing. I hiccup, forgetting why I’m waterside or that we’re both abandoned like balloons at a wedding. A foraging pelican winks at me twice. Somewhere in Nevada a goldfish has resolved to starve to death. He asks: What if aspens aspire to silence, which the wind has outlawed? I trust the expired volcano that admits its vulnerability more than an escalator step moving wearily into the destined position. He asks: Are you inculpable enough? Drinking down the winter that brims my southern eye socket, I freed my ravaged enemy with an unrecognizable bear hug. He asks: Will you pity a graffitied lamppost or the machinist imprisoned by his own gadget? I, speechless, only think of my father. He asks: Can you love in all the ways love is named?
The Frond
Today I bike to work and run over
a coconut leaf the size of my leg,
shaved off by last night’s razor storm.
No bell tower tolls for this fall;
even the rising sun turns a blind eye.
The frond blocks the narrow sidewalk
like a fish bone stuck in the town’s throat.
When I run over it,
the fish bone gives a moan
as if spitting a bubble.
Celery on the cutting board. A bamboo
broom sweeping the sea into a ditch.
Dew splashes. Three tiny lizards
flee with their tails curled.
A woman yawns in her fern-green jeep
waiting at the traffic light.
Desolation echoes. My porch light
long broken. Mailbox unchecked,
and I bike to work. Summer is eternal.
Somewhere, a couch longing
for my lolling skeleton: if sharp enough,
my ribs could lacerate the moon.
Tire marks all over my spine.
Soul never closer to soil.