Lynsey Griswold

CHIMERA

I am trying to get to David Bowie.

He exists on this plane in a jacket,
and he glides down the sidewalk
behind me at dusk.
He sees my pedestrian back.

I will grow my hair out, and lighten it.
My teeth will sharpen so I can bite that
razor-wire tightrope he slides along in twain,
find the margins where gauze and leather form a graceful shell.

I am trying to find David Bowie

and mutate into a platformed specter in the street,
hovering and undaunted by health insurance,
look back to see the concern slough from my shoulders,
the white sheet I lived under trampled in the gutter,

to tease out agate from the dilated pupil or
drag my palm down the grunt lurking beneath the groan,
and wrap my thin wrists-not-hands
around the microphone stand.

I am seeking the Bowie, please, David.

We don't need glitter or Vaseline,
but we are tethering Great Danes, still,
and the gaping void at the middle of it
is murmuring negations to the wild wind.

With Bowie, when he is found, we are chimera
with strawberry blond crown, and no need to explain.

Our jaw then is set and crooked, and our stylist withers before us.
Red peppers and saxophones, flashbulbs and abandonment.
brushing the breaking point,
laughter like a bitten apple bark.

Lynsey G. is a scribbler—of poems, stories, blog posts, advice columns, and journalism. She has had work published in places as various as Bitch Magazine, xoJane, McSweeney's, TOSKA, and Menacing Hedge, and she is currently working on a graphic novel and a chapbook and contributing to Luna Luna Magazine when not binge-watching sci-fi on Netflix or luring friends to her apartment to avoid dealing with the subway system.