Self-Portrait as (Super/Sub) Pacific
Shara Lessley
In the dark undersurface of sea,
500 fathoms beneath,
dark as the giant squid’s indigestible beak
lodged inside the sperm
whale’s second belly, the ocean’s
sleek anatomy reveals itself:
in fossilized cuttlebone, dull clams,
in the bloodbelly-comb jelly’s
sorry remains—there, flashing
<>
their bacterial specks like sequins,
slime eels entering (by
mouth, anus, by bloated gill) the dead
or dying. Attacked, their nerveless pink
heads cock up, first puckered
then folded inward. Tell me,
which living thing can help
but suffocate itself—when threatened,
what daughter won’t work
<>
herself in knots? In another time,
along an isolated strip, my father
leads me to a sea-side cave. Outside, naked
bodies shine like rocks. With no more
order than the washed-up
left-for-dead, rows of women
bathing like ready brides, their
nipples and hips faced up. Lying
on my back listening
for the coming tide, I stack stones
on my chest trying to attract
his attention, watching him
watch what I can’t
understand—why he pushes me
in the cave at the sound
of approaching footsteps. Since then,
such thoughts have turned to
relics; I bury them in sand. From that cavern,
<>
which is no more than a fault
in my mind, I’ve seen the sun—
90 million miles over the Pacific—
dip down, as if to pierce the surface
and somehow change it:
day after day, blue-
black giving up its corals and pinks.
Mother says the sea is a woman
tossing nature’s greatest curves:
<>
so barnacled white and blue, the she-
whale shadows her newborn, cresting
every few seconds, for weeks refusing sleep
to protect her calf. And the sand
crab bears 40,000 eggs
on its back—what have I borne
on mine? unable to pry my eyes
from the dark green forms of those
who made me. On a calmer night;
<>
in gentler weather. When the bay of
silence between them was still a harbor.
And the ship set sail. And from two
thousand miles, the heart-
shaped turtle returned to nest,
her hatchling’s sex (unlike mine)
determined by heat. At this point
in a body that can carry
another to term, I’ve determined only
the coldest mothers breed males.
Still, I’ve made no great migration,
but battle the past for hours—knowing
no matter how calm it appears,
the tide will soon be pulled beneath me.
Facing it, one sees smaller waves
always give way to the greater—
it was a man, my father so often told me,
whose words parted the sea. Looking out,
<>
I wonder how many pounds of marine
snow drifts each year from this
very surface, dusting miles of
downed bone? Meanwhile, microscopic
male tubers wriggle their barbed
heads into an egg sac (nights
I’ve felt sex’s similar current): un-
witting host (half mother/
lover) grazing the marrow-rich
<>
bone-yards of whale. Fact: A baleen
yields five tons of oil, sustaining
creatures by the hundreds; thus, from one
carcass emerges an ecosystem
that will thrive for a thousand years.
Fact: I, too, feed on debris
that will never surface—my thirst,
an inherited thirst, like an infant’s
appetite for milksong, which is sweet,
but only half as sweet as the taste
of my brother’s bones. As when
(in certain breeds of shark)
one stalks the uterine tank,
grazing on lesser embryos
stalled in the dark
chamber of their mother. Heart-
starved, the soon-
born will consume each womb-
<>
mate until it is, at last, alone.
But why blame one for wounding
what is nearest? Captive,
a nurse shark was found to have
in her stomach a human arm
so well preserved, the victim
recognized the milk-green cross-
bones tattooed across the wrist. Ankle
bone, drip-bag, the scarred half-
<>
moon stamped across his lip—which of
my father’s hard facts might be
softening inside me? If so, am I so
unlike the Osedax feeding off whale fall,
working the meat-stripped carcass
at the bone? No eyes, legs, mouth—
nothing to ferry me across the cold
seeps and hydrothermal vents,
what choice have I but to devour
<>
the discarded? Osedax—whose very name
houses the sounds of loss
in flux—hearing it, I can almost detect
those plumes whose never-ending
appetite means death: the male
(whose nature is to disguise itself,
burrowing in) two bits parasite, two mate—yes,
in death, such obscured selves
are, at last, released. Too late! Split
open, the host cannot know
the hundred forms fled
from her side to colonize
another. Quick as a sea whip
(which is neither quick, nor whole),
they disperse, absolved of the body
that’s held them. But who am I
to question the world’s design?
For good reason, the giant red mysid appears
<>
black in the deep’s dim-green.
And the sea cucumber breathes
through its anal ring; in danger,
sheds its organs, crawls away. In darkness,
I, too, have found it easy parting—
swift and mercenary,
divided from my body, some part
bleats but cannot be heard, as sound
will change the pressure of its medium
<>
when it moves. Like love being called
regret, regret, or a father’s sickness
(I cannot bring myself to say
the word) which lodges itself
in the gene pool. Lampfish, bristle-
mouth, predatory
tunicate—confined below, these know
unceasing night, as blind
anglers cannot perceive light, but rather
read the current. I have eyes,
yet cannot see to say what it is
I am. Drifting through days’
waves, crying (not), casting (not),
stumbling among the rocks,
grasses, dunes, half-numb to
the ocean’s loathsome drone. Am I not
half water? Crawling
so close to the bottom,
<>
do I not sing? I listen. I listen. The sets
hurry to communicate. Cast red and green,
I have come to the edge
they seem to say in the margins
before breaking. I, too, have come,
carried from some great blue
distance, only to find my buried
self washed up tonight alongside
litter and rot. Among dust and weeds,
<>
beneath satellites that have for centuries
guided men, I can barely make out
her figure. Is she stranded
there on the periphery?
Tonight, the bay’s estuaries
offer up their smooth white swords—
as if called, she crosses the dark
green border, rising from the brine-
specked tide, gliding toward
<>
the shadow of her making. I listen.
I listen—the water is full
of many shapes. A great fog
pushes back the Pacific’s
restless hills. And the past rises
again before me. As I
navigate its pitched surface,
daughter sister lover other
no myth I was holds true.