Love Song for Lizard Girl

Why do I love you, lizard girl?
Maybe it’s your fire, when you dance.
Remember my last night in San Diego? We chanced
And our DJ sets wrecked jazz with hip hop, wrecked rules
Like girls do. Especially lizard girls like you.
You lick me full of scratches and knicks that grip.
Your taloned tongue that scours my lips.
You have the warm-cold blood, like lizards do.
They say girls like you are sick.
The mammals say you have the wrong wires.
You’re not supposed to slither-skitter like fire.
I don’t like right-wired girls. They don’t lick me, like you lick.
Remember that last night in the Seattle lake?
You shed skin for scales. I kissed a water-snake.

Love Song for Water Snake Girl

I remember that last night at the lake in Seattle.
You shed your skin for scales. I kissed a water snake.
Your skin is thicker. You sweat. You gyrate.
I love it when your keratin rattles.
You took me hunting for small fish along the river ground.
I cooked your catch, fed you slowly, slithered into your eyes.
Snake girl eyes have no lids, I saw. Fingers slithering to thighs.
You crooned, rubbed your scales together around my fingers.
Hissed quietly, and softly, like a kiss.
Your constriction thickened, your coils clicked and ticked.
Small earths quaked inside you. I could hear as they lingered.
Remember the last night among the reeds of the Puget Sound.
You shed scales for tail, I brought your claws to ground.

Love Song for Armadillo Girl

In Spanish your name means little armored one.
You’re considered a beautiful, and antisocial, creature.
It’s said you have one hundred teeth, that you’re a screamer.
That night on the Puget Sound we brought claws to ground, and some.
You’re so pink fairy small and sleep sixteen hours a day.
You burrowed a den bed ten feet deep in Pasadena for us.
Cops were called, knocked on our door. You became a pink armored sun.
I unshaded the window, slid it open, to talk to them that way.
You’re a playful armadillo girl, gripping and rolling
Me and all over me. They threw you a parade in Texas
When your elementary constituents voted you in for election
You waved your claws, tossed your tail, and smiled with light growling.
You’re a shapeshifter, a light little heart drifter
Full of San Diego, Seattle, and San Antonio Soul-glitter.

Cid Galicia is a Mexican American poet teaching in New Orleans. Graduating MFA this summer through The University of Nebraska Omaha. Poetry editor for The Good Life Review, reader for The Kitchen Table Quarterly, and this year's FIRECRACKER Poetry Manuscript Awards. Recipient of the Richard Duggin Fellowship—granted for demonstrated excellence in writing, runner-up for the Academy of American Poets Helen W. Kenefick Poetry Prize, nominated for the Helen Hansen Outstanding Graduate Student Award, and the Diverse Rising Graduate Scholars Award. Interned as Assistant to the Editor (Kate Gale) for The Red Hen Press. His Learning Anthology, The Miracle of Flip-Flops, has just come to print through Red Hen. His work has appeared in The Watershed Review, The Elevation Review, Trestle Ties, South Broadway Press, Roi Faineant Press, and other journals.  He is excited to be attending the 2023 Residencies of Sundress Publications & The Kenyon Review. 

Published July 15 2023