Ammit

In the marsh I sat on the
chimera, legs criss-cross
applesauce

The gator-head asked me
about my envy

I said, I just wanted my
children’s teeth. O they
weren’t using them yet.
Their lives are so soft.

The second head was lion-
shaped and it rubbed its
teeth together like it
took Zoloft nightly

I said, O I killed ten
thousand birches. That
is not a commandment.

Finally we reached the
sun that bathes in the
middle of the muck and
the hippo head was like
All you stole was the
coat of the gray thing
drunk under the awning
though you were also
drunk and you were also
one month away from
eviction.

She up and curled away
into the distance that
chimera

Her head bobbed on the
water like a swollen
buoyant heart, her six
eyes like palm-sized
coals that burn against
banality

And the sun
drew me in with tendrils
of omni-stuff.

 

Chelsea Eckert is a creative writing undergraduate at San Jose State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Phantasmacore, Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, Strangelet Press, and Liquid Imagination, among others.