Chimera

Robert Bagg

a beast created from parts of other beasts

Over LA a crop duster opens
its wing pods; mist exhales from a briefcase
left hissing in a screeching subway station.
EbólaPox is so ethereal
we'll have no clue a countdown has begun.
It will take us a few infinite days
to die––we’ll blacken as we melt away.
I’ll spare you further symptoms. But terrorists

won’t, nor will their feisty microallies
who gather inside us like a slow motion
nuclear bomb, turning families and friends,
ever widening circles of strangers,
to silent singers, our bodies mouthing
hatred so primal it screams through our flesh.

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Robert Bagg has published three books of poetry, including Body Blows: New and Selected Poems (Massachusetts, 1988) and translated seven Greek dramas. His latest translation, The Oedipus Plays of Sophocles, will be published in 2004 by Massachusetts. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Prix de Rome, and an NDEA grant.