The Iowa Review
Volume 12
Issue 1 Winter
1981
Justification of the Horned Lizard
Pattiann Rogers
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Recommended Citation
Rogers, Pattiann. "Justification of the Horned Lizard." The Iowa Review 12.1 (1981): 100-101. Web.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol12/iss1/25
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Article 25
Justification
Pattiann
o? the Horned
Lizard
Rogers
I don't know why
It's so ugly?short
Eyes;
lipless smile
Hideous
lizard wants
the horned
horns
prickly
forced forever
scaly hollow
to live.
and
scowling
by bone;
its nose should be.
w7here
the horned
lizard has to live for,
know what
over the sun-irritated
sand, scraping
Skittering
It never sees
but gravel
The hot dusty brambles.
anything
And grit, thorns and stickery
insects, the towering
Creosote
and its whiplike
bush, the ocotillo
I don't
the severe
Branches,
Even
shade is either
edges of the Spanish
barren rock or barb.
dagger.
The horned lizard will never know
A
Of
never see the flower
in its life. It will
thing
the water-filled
lobelia bent over a clear
lush
creek.
Shallow
In waves
Fronds
It will
never
in the current
of
the waterclover.
belly of white
by
know7 moss
the bank or
It will
never
floating
the blue-blown
have a smooth
or a
dew-heavy
the mating
toad.
slip easily
mud
like the skink or squat in the dank humus
Through
At the bottom of a
forest in daytime.
decaying
never be free of dust. The
ever know
It will
it will
only drink
Is in the body of a bug.
Glistening
like
Trill
the bullfrog
never
It will
like
the horned
noble?
lizard possesses nothing
hide
covered
with
tail,
warty
Embarrassing
sharp dirty
touch to its body, even from its own kind,
Scales. No
or
ever be delicate
Could
caressing.
And
to live.
the horned
lizard wants
why
it burrows
into the sand
threatened,
frantically
a
of
limbs
determined
forehead,
fury
surprisingly
it even
for
almost
ribs. Pursued,
itself,
rising
fights
I don't
Yet
With
And
know
up,
100
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on its bowed
blood out of its eyes
Posturing
legs, propelling
streams shot
at the source
In
directly
tight straight
It
Of its possible
extinction.
for
itself,
fights
as if the
Almost
of that act,
rising up,
performance
The posture,
the propulsion
of the blood itself,
Were
the only reason needed.
and
justification
enough
101