Gummy Teeth

The family fern

where shoo-flies hang.

The soil black

and the plant in a sulk.

But press your hand

over top.

Close around small legs

flapping, the pink mouth

aghast.

The Carolina Anole will clamp your fingers,

the tip of your nose,

and stay there, hanging. Delight

the children. Shake the old woman’s head.

Make a parade

this Easter.

Make kissy faces at all the cousins,

the lizard dangling

in a bizarre contest of fear.

And let the children pet the fragile spines,

paper back, feel the ribs.

 See that the eye is lidded.

See that the lid is pale.

Hang the lizard from the ear lobe of the bravest child,

cheeks full of blood.

The lizard latched. Child laughing

 at the swing of its feet.

It feels like nothing, they say.

And then return. Say, child,

return the Carolina Anole to its fern.

Five-Lined Skink

A skink is a nasty

nasty beast. Bad dose

on four legs, tail

whipping, blue face

green face gold face teeth.

Come clawing through the wood pile

when it’s your turn to pull.

Come wild glare

          and gnarly hiss. 

There are muscles on the skink,

silken pinstriped runners

           no one has laid a finger to.

In the belly, I have seen:

balls of moths. Half frogs. Small fish.

          Once, a mouse.

I have felt the claws of the skink

when it is hurled, Georgia snowball.

          Grips, desperate lover, to my neck

in the driveway. Rubbed out under heel

for fear of the Wild

          in a slick bronze form,

while the winter set on heavy,

and the split pine sunk low.