Iguana Iguana
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About this ebook
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".
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Iguana Iguana - Caylin Capra-Thomas
Deep Vellum Publishing
3000 Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226
deepvellum.org · @deepvellum
Deep Vellum is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization
founded in 2013 with the mission to bring
the world into conversation through literature.
Copyright © 2022 Caylin Capra-Thomas
First edition, 2022
All rights reserved.
Support for this publication has been provided in part by grants from the
National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts,
the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture’s ArtsActivate program,
and the Moody Fund for the Arts:
ISBNS: 978-1646051779 (paperback) | 978-1646051762 (ebook)
Library Of Congress Control Number: 2021952051
Cover design and interior layout typesetting by Zoe Norvell
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
PASSAGE
I.
WINDOW
PATRON SAINTS
CROSSCUT
FOR MY TWENTY-YEAR-OLD SISTER ON MY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY
ONE WAY
PAST-LIFE SELF PORTRAIT WITH MOUNTAINS
CALLAHAN AND SUMNER
ALTER EGO WITH SHEEP
THE FUNNY PART
SPRING-LOADED
PETE
SUPERMASSIVE
PUT THAT ALL DOWN NOW. BACK AWAY.
CHAMBERS
LIGHTNING SUSPECTED IN DEATHS OF HORSES
II.
THE HAWK
CASSIOPEIA
TIME SURE FLIES WHEN YOU’RE NOT LIVING UP TO YOUR POTENTIAL
YOU’RE IN FOR A NICE SURPRISE
STRANGER DANGER
GREETINGS: EARTHLINGS, GRETCHEN
WHEN I WAS AN ALCHEMIST I DISCOVERED NOTHING
IGUANA IGUANA
GOAT THINGS
GAZE
TWISTER
NOT THE FLY BUT THE AMBER
KNOWING
CRYSTAL BALL
A PILGRIM IS A FOREIGNER
ALL MY EXES LIVE IN THIS POEM
WHITEOUT
OBLIVION
WE NeeEVER LIVED IN FLORIDA
MARRIAGE
CAVEAT
III.
THOSE LONG ABSENT ARE COMING BACK TO YOU
WE WERE YOUNGER THEN
MINTHE
I DON’T KNOW WHAT PEOPLE SHOULD DO
CEDAR KEY
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
RICOCHET
MICHELLE PFEIFFER IS MAKING SOMETHING OF A COMEBACK
ALTER EGOS TALK BACK
THE WILDING
PRESENT CONDITIONAL
TURNING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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.
SpaceI.
WINDOW
So many friends I’ve caught beautiful, not knowing it,
cursing