Gin & Bleach

"My Reptile"

Little frilléd lizard

with your big mouth and your clutch of egg.
Pure urge iguana
—I wanna wanna wanna—heavy pet in a moist habitat.
Your dewlap licks down my spine;
your creep yearns,
yearns your crawl,
like a small machine that you rev and rev and rev until the engine floods.

Gin and bleach: two clear liquids aiming for purity, bordering the toxic. Catherine Wing's poems are soaked in her cocktail, mixing doubt, loneliness, rough elbows, and razor focus. It riddles, aiming askew for a straight answer: how do we make our way through this world?