Requiem Shark

Obscenity swims deep. Momentum, verb,adjective in motion becomes repetition amongminor, ugly variation. Animals come with teeth,knowing the score. Grow up queer and growup knowing the grammar cannot holdthe center. Inevitability, something must give.

We, royal and obscene, must live nowthe way sharks do. Breath come motion,action to reaction to the beginning is the end isthe fucking beginning of our lungs (again).Breathe now or die among the sharks. Their teethcompound to my teeth, cursed to breath, to bite, to beas I am. Told—

    (smile, girl,        you could be            so pretty

                if you tried).

Breathe now. The queer is the monster is the metaphoreternal. Page to pen to blood, cycling again. Sharks bite to learn,call it exploratory, this curiosity turned amputation. Truth swungas blood among blood, the word in the waterand this bad smile. Said,

    (pretty, after all,        is respectable is the lesser            of all our dead

                remember?)

Of course I bit. Sharklike, the story repeats. The storyswings obscene past enamel and blood and a realbeyond the real. Animals and queers and big, bad teethtaken past metaphor. Understanding written from pressureand hemoglobin. Us to we and back to me again andno respectable center. It came at cost.

Sush now. I cried when they pulled that molar.This goes one way. Nonetheless—

I know something will bleed me and my broken,disrespectful teeth down to the quick.

I know something elsewill survive.