Matthea Harvey

You Know This Too
 The bird on the gate and the goat nosing the grass below make a funny little fraction, 
thinks the centaur. He wonders if this thought is more human than horse, more poetry 
than prose. Sometimes it’s hard not to abandon the whole rigmarole of standing at the 
counter- using a knife and fork to politely eat his steak and peas- to go outside and put his 
head in the grass. But what his stomach wants, his tongue won’t touch; what his mouth 
wants, his stomach recoils from. Through the restaurant window he sees flashes of silver
 and pink in the river. It’s so clogged with mermaids and mermen, there’s no room for 
fish. And under the bridge, a group of extremist griffins, intent on their graffiti- Long 
Live the Berlin…The spray paint runs out and while they’re shaking the next can in their 
clenched claws, the centaur spells out Wall on his napkin, and sketches next to it a girl in 
sequins getting sawed in half.