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Lizard Brain
Charles Grosel

Called out by the sun, the yellow
daubed lizard skirts from bush to bush,
a cartoon burglar, tail twice its
body. It goes still, then snaps up
a grasshopper, tears off its wings,
lizard brain at work, no worries
about fleeting beauty, just the
crunch of protein. Finished, the
desert stalker cracks its whip around
the trestle leg, leaving in the dust
the arc of a perfect circle.

—
An editor, writer, and poet, Charles Grosel grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. After stints on both the West and East Coasts, he now lives in Arizona with his wife and daughter. He studied English literature at Yale University and fiction writing at the University of California at Davis, where he was a Regent’s Fellow. To earn a living, he has been a teacher, editor, trainer, and ghost writer, among other jobs, but through it all he has kept writing poetry and fiction. He has published stories in journals such as Western Humanities Review, Fiction Southwest, Water-Stone, and The MacGuffin, as well as poems in Slate, The Threepenny Review, Poet Lore, Cream City Review, and Harper Palate. His chapbook, The Sound of Rain Without Water, came out in 2020.

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