Patricia Lockwood: Search “Lizard Vagina” and You Shall Find

SEARCH “LIZARD VAGINA” AND YOU SHALL FIND

A higher country had a question, a higher

country searched and found me, and the name

country of the country was north of me, Canada.

When I think of you I think up there just as I

country think when I think of my brain, my brain

and the bad sunning lizard inside it. Today

you searched “lizard vagina,” Canada.  It is so

hugely small if you can imagine it; it is scaled

it is scaled so far down. It evolved over many

millions of years to be perfectly invisible to you;

and so you will never see it, Canada. Here is

some pornography, if it will help: tongues flick

out all over the desert! Next time try thunder

lizard vagina. That will be big enough for even

country you, Canada. You have one somewhere

in your hills, or else somewhere in your badlands.

Perhaps someone is uncovering a real one right

now, with a pickaxe a passion and a patience.

Ever since she was a child she knew what she

would do. She buttons her background-colored

clothes, she bends down to her work;

clothes, she bends down to her work keep spreading,

clothes, she  Canada, she will show you to yourself.

Your down there that is, my Up There. Oh South oh

South oh South you think, oh West oh West now West

say you. The pickaxe the passion and the patience

clothes, sh hears, pink tongue between her lips just thinking.

The stones and the sand and the hollows they watch

clothes, sh her. The tip of her tongue thinks almost out loud,

“I have a brain am in a brain brain suns itself in lizard

clothes, sh too. Where would I be if I were what I wanted?”

Has a feeling finally, swings the pickaxe- the passion-

clothes, sh and the patience-tip down.

Patricia Lockwood’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, Tin House, and Poetry. She is the author of Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (Octopus Books, 2012) and Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (Penguin, 2014). This poem first appeared in Fence.