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?