Current Reading: The Hurting Kind

I am reading Ada Limon's recent poetry collection, The Hurting Kind, today. I am enjoying what I read. At one point I stopped reading when I came across the word parthenogenesis. I asked Michal what it means and he informed me that it is a type of asexual reproduction. He also informed me that some plants can have both sexual and asexual reproduction. The Greek morphemes mean, literally virgin and creation. So, one might call this process virgin birth. This word came from a poem called "Only the Faintest Blue." Here is a section of that poem:

 

But mostly I remember the flitting of lizards,

how they had felt like kinship,

 

how later, I read that the New Mexico whiptail

is an all-female species, reproducing by

parthenogenesis, asexual yet genetically diverse.

Yellow lines run the length of their gray bodies

 

with vibrant blue-green tails when they're young.

And as they age, their scales, their whole body changes,

 

until only the faintest blue remains, and safer now,

they become the earthen color of the river.

 

Here is a picture of one of these lizards: