By Damen O'Brien
I will slip between the loose scales of a fish. I will tickle
under the silver swivel of an eye, lodge like an old hook
in the harp of a gill. I will snag like a coral’s chip in a salt
gullet or lose myself in a marlin’s deep dreams; flicker
like a fitful torch; fade into a scarred and battered ancient,
absolute and implacable, cruising an abyssal calm. I will
haunt the singular obsession of some circling leviathan.
There will be no room for failure, no place for hope.
I will strip down to essence. I will fold into myself.
There will be no past and no future. I will finally know
what I desire. Someday, the salmon trawlers will gather
over these waters, will drop their hundred entangling
nets, their needling hooks like the strings of a puppet
and I will ride up on the cold brow of a behemoth
through the black silt of memory and swallow a boat.