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[Poetry] Three Poems by Paul Brooke

Catastrophic Molt

 

—For elephant seals when the top layer of fur and skin

molts, it leaves them unable to swim or feed for a month.

 

 

Elephant seals preen in quarantine,

stuck and landlocked in a labyrinthine

of cliff-coves, blubber-vats, corset-baleen.

 

Pods of weanlings ungulate as they dream

 

amongst vertebrae of a hundred slaughtered

fin whales. Seals slough roughshod coats, all authored

by bioaccumulation, transferred.

 

Beach wrack shudders under this terror scene.

 

Brackish water brines like a toxic tea

absorbing filth, staining the Scotia Sea.

As it sponges, creatures flee from debris,

from the steeping of methyl mercury.

 

 

 

 

The Cataloger of Smaller Things

 

—As red algae population explodes, it will increase

melting in Antarctica. This will fuel climate change.

 

 

Those lichen on whale bone are smeared and cracked

mustard. These diatoms are two-part trick

boxes, metallic buttons, sequins diffracted

 

on a gaudy dress. As we age, our studies

 

sharpen and we become the catalogers

of smaller things, the connoisseurs

of the miniscule. We turn inward, spurn

 

infinite, reject enormity, uneasy

 

at our own insignificance. Swaybacked,

we poke at red algae in the snow, packed

like platelets of blood, like droplets splattered

after a coughing contagion contracted.

 

 

 

Jonah’s Icefish

(Neopagetopsis ionah)

 

 

Their blue nests, 60 million strong, cover

the Weddell Sea floor, while fathers hover

over their thousand eggs, willing to suffer

 

endlessly. To overwhelm predators,

 

we must satiate, overpopulate.

Our houses spread at exponential rates.

We fate all living things to propagate,

 

pretend the earth is not a sepulture

 

or a hand over the mouth to smother.

We are gluttonous seals catching souvenir

icefish and murdering just to murder.

Others devour our castoff slaughter.

 

 

Paul Brooke is the author of eight books including Pantagruelian: Photographs and Poems of Torres del Paine, The Skáld and the Drukkin Tröllaukin: Photographs and Poems of Iceland, and Sirens and Seriemas: Photographs and Poems of the Amazon and Pantanal. He has published in over 100 literary journals including Scientific American, The North American Review, and The Antioch Review.

 


 





 

 

 

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