Mako

Cleaning Mako shark stoned in firelight

I catch fire from a brainstem

where blood is darkest in my hand,

dark as the underwaters it hurtled from

blind to the flying gaff.

I have killed & I have slaughtered

in no name but my own & still I raise

the great head to the sky, prise open

the jaws to show rows of teeth

staggered like a tank trap, & feint

left in a circle at a school of stars.

In a ring of trees underlit by fire,

my knees in guts cascading from the carcass

uplifted in my arms, I lurch keening

for the moon that drags me out to sea,

moon I never dreamed but

as a bloodred disc occulting in my heart …

now this bloodlord of the sea I feed on fire.