It's A Slow Death

Aquatic lions stir, their timber cage

barnacle-fixed to the sinking

California coast. Yolk-thick light oozes between the beams

divorcing shadows entwined below the pier.

Evidence of murder appears in a swarm of sand-

fleas balloning on a stage all shades of red

gore. The piping elegy is sung by

hungry gulls

indebted to the bone. An orphan’s

jeremiad echoes off jetty stones to warn

killers frequent these waters. Listless bodies

lay in the rookery as the late

morning dissipates into sweltering

noon and the half-ton smell of rotting

Otariidae wades for miles downshore.

Pocketing soot-stained spoons, urchins of

questionable repute duck into the bamboo

reeds and infamy of Hobo Jungle, pursued by

six-gun flatfeet in blue. It’s where river and ocean meet

that wind-driven marionettes converge, overcome with galvanic

urge to carve great black gashes in the sun.

Valley anglers fix their lines from the shitspackled

wharf rails. A few shimmering baitfish slip free and flail on

xanthic pilings. Their mouths tear open

yawning in awe as they drown in the perfect yellow

zephyr.