Damp and chill, damp and chill. My legs rubber,
I stop to wheeze where the salt spray is mist,
wipe my face with a cold, tender hand.
I have to piss.
I pick over rocks,
the liminal terminus, where land and water
coexist, my hands for balance slapping
slimy stones and I slip, sneakered, to the
ocean’s edge.
Wrenched there between two jagged
boulders, flopping like a seal, I see it.
Flesh, like uncooked bacon, jostled by waves,
which make sick slops and gargles as they thrust
upon that
pale
strip,
streaked with red lace.
There is a sound from its vibrating mouth,
a jangling hiss that gives me chills to hear.
My body clenches, tenses, and I spend myself
to christen that flesh, angel, to silence
the jangle, to crash down the hiss, to
gild
that
pale-bellied fish
stricken from Heaven.
About the Author
Z. P. Oxblood is a writer, performer, and artist, and creator of the YouTube channel Graveyard Poetry.
About the Artist
Landis Blair, author and illustrator of Vers le Sud, The Night Tent, and The Envious Siblings: and Other Morbid Nursery Rhymes. Illustrator of the award-winning graphic novel The Hunting Accident: A True Story of Crime and Poetry, written by David Carlson. A Member of The Order of the Good Death. Based out of Chicago, Illinois.
