Requiem Shark

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

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

    (smile, girl,
        you could be
            so pretty

                if you tried).

Breathe now. The queer is the monster is the metaphor
eternal. Page to pen to blood, cycling again. Sharks bite to learn,
call it exploratory, this curiosity turned amputation. Truth swung
as blood among blood, the word in the water
and 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 story
swings obscene past enamel and blood and a real
beyond the real. Animals and queers and big, bad teeth
taken past metaphor. Understanding written from pressure
and hemoglobin. Us to we and back to me again and
no 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 else
will survive.