Woman Discovers Mystery Animal in Tree Is Actually Croissant

Because, you see, she had always wanted an iguana.
What if the iguana loved the lilacs, lay in longing for her?
What if it was in a Tennessee Williams play?

Desire rearranging the days,
she held out as long as she could
until she had to know:
could she hold this leather longing,
living branch-like in her blooms?

Hopeful, she called in crisis:
when what you want presents itself,
dangles like a Christmas ornament,
you can’t just stumble towards it
like a drowning woman, clasp its midriff
and sing. Bring it down for me, she said,

fearing the first touch—when a heart
gets what it wants, who knows what
follows? She came to fear the jeers:
what a flake.

Later, she regretted calling,
hand-stitched this reminder into a linen,
framed it, hung it on her wall:
No nets are needed when no fear is felt.
No one’s iguana do this for you.

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Leonora Carrington: An Ekphrastic Poem

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She lives within the bluebottle fly,
haints of her mother scumbled on the ceiling of night.
The seahorse moonscape of this dinner party makes
her whole body go mustard—only the fancy chicken is unscarred.

Who is the dinner? Who is the guest?
Who loves the dandelion-faced singer, snipping off your auburn hair?

She loves the soup of this evening, punctuated by the raspberry forest,
the deer so small they need not run for cover.

Who made them small?
What time will this dinner party end?