Cynthia Belmont Chimera Now turned she-goat, all belly, I heave against your restraining fingers, barbed and necessary. You with your lion's head roar in me like a vanished twin, the brains in this failed operation, the teeth. In my sleep: our shared tail thrashing silver-scaled. You've disappeared into the zoo my body alone remembers — uncaged, roaming city streets at night. I'm still bristling, stray, headless here without you, my half, my sweet ghost fracture.

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