(a Lovecraftian erasure)

Murderous sea: cuss.
Tears flood the reef, atolls bleach to skull
rage
archipelago enters interzone, horned stag sanctuary
final extrusion
microplastics ebb through coral debris, chalk white
mob jelly
luxury beach, your entourage stands by, polaroid trash
kraken
tumbles through tentacles, till it adheres to inflamed encrustation
boat-wound mola mola, 400 pound judder
netted millstone with eye blink stare
lime poison veins the water
Chelonii: unable to retract, she spins into the net
wrapped through the fin, shark blood
Dunedin
end of the Aotearoan map.
Diomedeidae: the Albatross’s nest, scope
rage
alone in the hut, red purple green blue intestines
the end came
rope across the seas, flay open stomachs, acids geyser
documentum: the ocean’s plastic lesson

 

Many words in this poem are taken from a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, refiguring a speculative racist/misogynist daddy into a different kind of ecopoetic alien: violences shift into meditations on how ‘we’ live with this earth.