Photo: Harold Schechter
 

erasing love

 
Aubade: Feverish Speculation
 
 
 
Love
                        might still be
 
 
a carcass in deep freeze until              someone          can clean and mount the skeleton
 
 
 
                                                                                    *
Love
                        might still be
 
 
ice in a ditch
 
 
                                                                                    *
Love
 
 
can jettison      bodies              much the way lizards can shed their tails
 
 
                                                                                    *
 
                        If something about tectonic movement is killing
Love
We wanted the kids to see
 
 
tissue samples, skin samples and eyeball samples
 
 
 
 
Ars Poetica
 
 
 
                                    designed to see in the low light of the deep ocean
 
the       eye       is unusually large
 
Love
might still be under water
not spotted
 
 
 
 
Olivia Suggests All the Women in Class Imagine Male Sexuality
 

 
unpredictable
                                    hard
 
 
                        long and eel-like in appearance, can grow to stupendous lengths though ancient rumors of 55-foot specimens are probably exaggerated
 
 
a handful of
Love
 
 
a variety of parasite
 
          male
 
                                                                        excitement
 
 
Elegy
 
 
 
                        Milton                          said
 
                                                                                                                        left with
 
 
the
remains
 
                                    You can only                            Love
                        an  ichthyologist
 
 
           
 
Ekphrasis
 
 
 
            quite near the surface, suspended vertically with         head  up, just passively floating
 
 
 
and      known as ryugu no tsukai, or “messenger from the sea god’s palace
 
picture     it
 
 
 
 
 
Ode to Love
 
 
 
you
 
 
noted with excitement that the male was missing        the posterior part of its body
 
It may be that all individuals pass through a stage in which they are males and then
                        they’re females
 
 
 
the head will soon be delivered to
 
 
 
you

 

Source text: “Oarfish Offer Chance to Study an Elusive Animal Long Thought a Monster” by Douglas Quenqua, The New York Times 11/2/13.