#ghost shark
That was the year the cicadas started
in my skull. Their buzz-saw droning; the fraught
song of dust and summer, I’m told. Bleated
noise. It came with the pneumonia. I thought
it was part of the fever. If my ghost
shark can haunt me during delirium
why not raucous bugs in the innermost
depths of my ear? Soon my fever’s bedlam
faded but the sing-song did not. Even
now, love, as I write this, the din’s low groan
keeps me distraught. I wake with radio
static, thinking the dark bellowed. Listen.
Only I can hear it, that deep bass drone;
what hell’s divas call, “Basso profundo.”
][][
Notes:
In opera the lowest vocal range that a tenor can go is called basso profundo. Starting around a year ago I began developing tinnitus, a ringing in the ears like radio static that is often accompanied by hearing loss. In the last two months or so it has gone from a dull buzz that I could ignore to a much louder droning which wakes me up at night. I find the sort of disconnected musing I need, such as when I’m writing, harder now.
Tangled hair in foam. Desolate skin. Breasts
beaten in waves. Where will my ghost shark go
when my lung start to fill? The sea’s conquests
shall all pass overhead while terrors flow
around. Listen: even darkness can blur
in the deepening depths. Without gravestone
or bones you won’t call me your ancestor.
Child of stars and storms. Child of a sea crone
and her fishwife. Orphan of all the drowned.
What good are husky-wet lips when you won’t
kiss them? Underflow: make me writhingly
grotesque, like the Sea’s fey or Brine’s hellhound.
Once I pressed to enter you. You said, “don’t.”
We stopped. My grave lays here: in memory.
Two of my favorite deep sea atrocities
