Chimera
by Lily Suckow Ziemer
My mother is
Goat headed
Snake tailed
She carries
Six babies,
Four long dead
Lingering
After their physical forms
Have been flushed out.
She carries
Three sisters,
Two long gone
Leaving
Memories tinged
With desertion.
She carries
One mother,
The serpent she forgives.
In her lion form,
She makes
Our cells hers.
We tear at the soft walls of her
Stomach, just
To hurt from within.
She won’t let us go,
Extract us like the disease we are.
She lets us
Rename her strength
“Monster”
Her body won’t let her object.