Sa’me Shoujyo the Shark Girl: sonnet cycle
I.
Press your mouth up to mine. These words displease
but its all we got. I am salt, blue mists
covering dune grass. Dunes are the junkie's
eyelashes. You are drunk. Our kiss consists
of your tongue in my mouth. Fat tongue that twists
in the wet air. Your mouth is a squandered
coast, a lone girl walking toward us. This tryst
is odd, you would never allow a third
to join us, another voice that yammered
your name. Yammering. Once I kissed the ghost
of a drowned girl. You are not her. No word
or kiss can bring her back. You, a bone coast
and I? Something simple you will forget,
like tar fog's chill or a love dog's regret.
II.
It is not this kiss that binds them here. Not
their lost bodies, you see, that is crucial
to keep them; to say, "if I had known what
it's like …" No kiss can fill them with lustful
warmth. I ran my tongue along each dreadful
gill. Kissed where the skin webbed the hand into
fin. Her breath gave off a girl-curd, carnal
stench. I licked right where the shark teeth bit through
her side. Where "ta'awah," the old Hebrew
word for lust, was cut before they threw her
overboard. It's not this kiss they want, you
see, but the breath that came with the rapture
when you said, "if I'd known what it's like, dear,
I'd have let you take me right now, right here."
III.
You talk about hating this photograph.
I see that. It's a blur. My stove filling
the room with gas, making every damn laugh
high, odd, terse. The camera's laughter flooding
my head, the men, the body struggling.
Here is the old camera. Here is the tug
boat, ropes, laughing as they lug you, thrashing
legs, arms, O of mouth, overboard. Their smug
grins. They took photographs. The camera dug
into you, cut into your skin dark pink
lines, held you, let you drop. Now you just shrug
as if we are not bound to our past, stink
with it. Gas stinks, fireworks. You run shark claws
here, there. We kiss but does the photo pause?
IV.
A plea heard, cut off, like mad. Guttural
distress in the fog. Some depraved rapture.
Raving. Someone in the grizzle-drizzle.
Some thing out there yowling out her vulgar
garbled mouthfuls. Ghost girl. Still, I shiver
each time she touches me. Passing through me
like ice. The way the dead always shudder
when they embrace us with blue lips milky
with lust. They say death turns lust nakedly
urgent. Who still cries like that? Her mouth swung
open. The coast swung shut. Who would blindly
follow to the root of her throat? My tongue
lost in the mist. Someone gives a cry, distress.
Cuts off, cries, cut off, cries. This is endless.