Cryptopsaras couesii
Down in the body-lit night-sodden sea,
somber, sub umbra, I’m this tiny restless
inchling, a mere appendage, a would-be
hanger-on. Dimorphic nub-end, destined
to be a rudder attached to some underside.
I blunder the deeps—I nose around for
this blubbering fish out of Bosch, mega-
mouthed she-goblin, face flush with cicatrix,
visage like the dehisced petals of a rose.
I give her my slobbering heartbalm, my brain-
milk, my id & my will, a latecomer who stumbles,
who sleep-talks an epilogue, out of his depths,
while auras swim through my skull; all my life
—short as it is—I have searched for this
caruncled giantess, this alluring hulk, her utter
flesh darkened a beauty-marked mole. I taste
her ripe spinules. My little jaws gawp & hold
her, molting their teeth, the brink of me un-
slurries & folds, pickles in her brine, dis-faced
with pincher-like denticles in pure unbecoming,
bound tight, dreamfast & identical, made one
with my host, flooding my stuff in her tissue,
gutting out the mere self, poor serf I once was:
lost in oceans of laboring blood, a single pulse,
among a brood filled with germ, each milting
away, milked of their gunk, ceded as seed, as
spume spent by whims of her luminous sweep.