Chimaera

Will Dowd

If we can agree that an object is just
a chunk of spacetime and if, out of habit,
spacetime is especially curved this Halloween,

then from now on when I say "you" I mean
the clock face of Big Ben at the moment
when we left for the party,

that bat we saw in Hastings
(you called it a "spleen with wings"),
and the hands you flailed as it sailed over us.

You are my right eye when it first looked
into the mirror today, and my left eye
when it first saw the right.

And when I say "I," on the other hand, I
am referring to the air escaping from the knuckles
you just cracked, the leopard print purse

swinging at your side as we speak,
the cartilage of the sphinx's nose
the day it went missing,

and I, if I am not mistaken, am also the fake
IV drip of the girl now greeting us at the door,
telling us that her zombie slash doctor costume

is a not-so-subconscious revenge on her retarded
doctors and the hospital and the life-sucking chemo
that is finally over and can she get us a drink?

Volume CXIX, No.1