Christopher Lloyd
I keep having this nightmare where I am bitten by babies & cats.
it’s always the same: the tooth lodges in that arc between thumb
& index. one night, a baby sheds its exterior, skin slipping in all
directions. it doesn’t seem to be in distress. I wake up soaked &
it’s like I’m living in that bright LA jump-scare. never sure which
timeline is in charge, whether the horror is mine or someone else’s.
when we first drove through the hills & saw the city sprawl
below it was nothing like the movies. I imagined a mauve sunset, dull
hum of the electric grid. instead, I talked to a lyft driver about her
childhood in louisiana & the erykah songs she played via her phone.
in the canyons the air felt so clear I inhaled the blue through the window.
Christopher Lloyd (he/him) is a writer and academic. His pamphlet, Pick Up Your Feelings, will be published in 2024 by fourteen poems. Chris is the author of poems, stories, and essays that have appeared in Action, Spectacle, PERVERSE, Fruit Journal, Lighthouse, &Change and elsewhere.
andotherpoems.com 