The Unsurprising Hybrids

Step into a theater,
Rent a streaming service, browse
Big-box and local bookstores,

And you will find the monsters,
All the hybrids that delight
People for entertainment.

They’re all pretty much the same
Compounds of exactly those
Ordinary animals

That are the least delightful—
The worms, snakes, bears, and insects,
The occasional condors—

Mashed together for dragons,
Alien intelligence,
Usually made enormous

And given impossible
Gifts of flight, fire, time-travel,
Immortality, the works.

How can you be so brilliant
As to imagine beings
Immune to life’s certainties

Of death and gravity, but
Also be incapable
Of making magic creatures

Defy memory any
Other absolutist ways?
How can you see forever

Only mashed as familiar
Shapes of beasts your ancestors
Had to worry might eat them?