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

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.
Continue reading Inside the Belly →
This beauty by Titus Groan will be found in KILLER WHALE VOL. 1
Hold tight (click the image to see it larger, beautifuler)

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.
Continue reading Some Excerpts of Spatial Oases: adapted from Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s The Ocean World, V.1: OAISIS IN SPACE →
extremely contemporary poetics, extremely contemporary poetry journal