We Don't Live with the Others

by Lisa Lahey

We don’t act like them, the xenophobes
and kinemortophobes,
each of us with a peculiar
look and a lamentable odour.
We’d love to run among the blue green grass
on frozen glass mountains,
with the cannibals
and their turquoise camels.
There is the one who sheds her skin 
every birthday so she can grow
while the skin melts into the ground.
There is another whose eyes
are moonlit lasers that x-ray every bone
and dream in a demon’s head.
You fear us all, that’s why we stay hidden.
It isn’t fair, shetani,
but what is?

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Lisa Lahey's short stories and poetry have been published in 34th Parallel Magazine, Five on the Fifth, Bindweed Anthology, Spadina Literary Review, Vita Poetica, Ariel Chart Review, VerbalArt Journal, and Altered Reality.

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