Whale Fall by Terese Mason Pierre

for Todd Dillard

How do shrimp
perpetuate in their
current space, I ask
your tectonic back
in the morning,
How do they hold
the oppressive blue,
the silky maws over their
thrumming ridges,
sickle-shaped strength

I also have a heart
where my brain should be.
It is too early for you
to entertain me with honesty
You give me the scales
you shed, old teeth
weathered to nubs,
I can sketch the negative
space around you,
colour you in with
coral’s fire
a silver dorsal,
sharp predatory light

You try to fathom the
curios I collect, garbage
you throw overboard
that cinches my chelonian throat
You hate that I’m leagues ahead
of you in learning this kind of
saltless love

Every day I wait for the moon to
drown me, draw water up
past the point I can’t excuse you,
match my cheek to a storm’s sea,
my words sacs that once held
young sharks but now burst in
other bellies, hypertonic

I wonder what it is like to be
amphibious, freshwater free

I imagine your fear of this
tentacled round your heart,
a hypothermic stinging sleep.
I see the frenzy distant in the clouds,
tinged with sleet and blood,
the flurry of fins in sand

Here I straddle fault lines,
brine-bodied and de-boned
the silt-filled ocean
after a whale fall

This poem was featured in Issue 07 of Canthius.

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Terese Mason Pierre is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Puritan, Quill and Quire, and Strange Horizons, among others. She is currently the Senior Poetry Editor of Augur Magazine, a Canadian speculative literature journal. Terese has also previously volunteered with Shab-e She’r poetry reading series, and facilitated creative writing workshops. Terese lives and works in Toronto. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @teresempierre.