Ekphrastic piece

This piece was created in response to the following poem by my colleague Dr. Gary Leising, in the English Department at  Utica College (I will re-post a better photo in the next day or two... I was just excited to get this posted now):

I have heard of people being born with tails or webbed feet,

so why do you not believe I have a lizard tongue

darting out then in, in then out, testing the air,

tasting the scent of meat on a neighbor’s barbecue.

I tell my wife the cut of pork—loin—the sauce’s

flavor—honey garlic—before my fleshy forked tongue

runs the rim of my thin, nearly nonexistent lips.

Why must it be forked? I wonder at the mirror,

why a snake- or Komodo-dragon-like thing

for years scaring away clients on sales calls, women

in singles bars folding a tiny clutch under an arm,

scooting with Scotch or a martini to a dim corner spot?

I want so little – not even a human tongue,

but a chameleon’s, a long, precise projectile;

from ten feet I could hit Roosevelt’s nose

on a dime. As the daiquiri-drinking busty

blonde moves away, she won’t know what hits her,

a fleshy arrow suctioning to the highest point

of her model perfect, lightly rouged high cheekbone.