The Midnight Zone
It’s snowing at the bottom of the sea —
dead skin, dead plants, sand, soot, dust, and shit
falling from the light into Earth’s deepest hole.
Snowshine, it’s called; the blood-orange vampire squid
packs it into white balls. Eats.
What doesn’t eat the snowshine eats the eater.
Shrimp, in The Midnight Zone, spit flame at danger,
sea cucumbers shuck their ghost-skins to make decoys,
and the one thing uglier than an anglerfish is anglerfish sex.
At our ugliest, and given the right lure,
who hasn’t filter-fed down to The Midnight Zone? —
past the upper reaches where the bristlemouth shines sea-blue;
past the larvacean, its vaulted, wing-shaped antechamber
spun out of mucus-clouds, and rivaling Calvino.
As for the plug-ugly angler, the lamp dangling off its brow
brings to mind the scowl of Diogenes —
born by the Black Sea, his only home a clay wine jar,
he died by holding his breath, some claim;
others blame raw octopus, or a septic dog bite,
or say they saw his body flung off the city walls, left for boars —
his last request. Everyone agrees he died enslaved.
To read Steven Cramer’s essay “Strange Gatherings: The Nightworld of John Berryman’s ‘Dream Song #10,'” click here.