a beaver wrote me

a song once
when our bellies were full
& the moon was full
              coyotes howling
              at the bone eye
her fingers
              plucked          the grass
              tail                     slapped the water

she sang about last thursday
hiding her mouth underwater
              to keep herself quiet
              when trappers trapped
              her momma
sheared her momma’s fur off
& left her naked
              floatin round somewhere

now this beaver’s
pluckin grass like a guitar
& i’m the only human
who hears her song
the others just don’t listen:
bievers r jus aenimels
              they say
tht wil nvr chanj
                         –Christine Lyons

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Inside the Belly

I
The seaman James Bartley screams as he slides down a sperm whale’s throat in 1891. He was in the stomach for fifteen hours, unconscious in the stench of digesting fish. He survived after his shipmates sliced the belly open and pulled his twitching body into bed, where he stayed for almost a month. (If this happened today he would take seventy selfies and post them online.) According to the tales, he lost his sight and his skin whitened. He wasn’t holding any blade.

[Untitled] by Titus Groan

This beauty by Titus Groan will be found in KILLER WHALE VOL. 1

Hold tight (click the image to see it larger, beautifuler)

Some Excerpts of Spatial Oases: adapted from Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s The Ocean World, V.1: OAISIS IN SPACE

All the water on earth makes up about only one-tenth of one percent of earth itself.In this diagram the black circles on the left represent 100 percent of the specified chemical found in ocean water. Circles on the right show the relative amount of the specified chemical in human blood compared to the ocean.A. / Pteropod. This wing-footed snail captures tiny animals in a-thick-mucus-net.

I. / Orca. The orca has been given an undeserved name—“the KILLER WHALE.” He is no more a killer than any other animal who must actively capture a meal.