Sa’me Shoujyo the Shark Girl: sonnet cycle
I.
How do you find yourself in ghost stories?
Unwelcome love, the sea eats the milk-pearls
you placed on your breasts. Gobbles your gypsies'
sea-skirt; your shark-tooth necklace; your blue swirls
tattooed on your back. It chews it up, hurls
about, lets you tremble. Unwelcome love,
you are a ghost to me take your sea-girl's
skin out upon the waves, sing, float above
the dark form that flits in the soft olive,
aquamarine, milk blue. This is a ghost
story. Unwelcome love, now you sing of
blame, you sing of terrible blame, almost
like love, you sing of the shark, the dreadful
maw that will gut you, mouthful by mouthful.
II.
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.
III.
How do you find yourself in ghost song?
Listen to all of this, every ghastly
detail. How you rose to that refrain, long
wet hair dragging behind you. Your grisly
wound, large pieces missing. How your ghostly
song sings; there are the three men, how they lug
you, all thrashing of arms, legs, the ugly
O of your mouth, over the side. Their smug
laughter. Their fingers bent, their long knives dug
into your skin dark pink lines. Now you stare,
dripping. Your blue lips part, a kiss. You shrug
as if we're not bound to our past, despair
by it. Our lips touch, your girl shark claws, thin
fingers, press deep, searching, pass through my skin.
IV.
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.
V.
How do you find yourself in ghost stories?
When a lover is faithless let the kiss
change, as deep seas change as distant bodies
pass through them. When the lover is remiss
or does nothing let the winds stir, the hiss
of wave grow loud, sky dark. Somewhere out there
Sa'me, the shark, turns. The soprano, Miss
Shoujyo, in white face, sings the prayer
for the dead. Her gown torn, her long black hair
sticky with sweat, she calls Sa'me to her.
This is the ghost story. Roughly, the air
changes, the waves, the song. My false lover,
you have betrayed me … she turns on the stage,
naked with nothing but her teenage rage.
VI.
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 you touch 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? Your mouth swung
open. The coast swung shut. Who would blindly
follow to the root of your throat? My tongue
lost in the mist. Someone gives a cry, distress.
Cuts off, cries, cut off, cries. This is endless.