Waiting for a Girl Like You
a shark has been wandering the Arctic Ocean since 1627
the Greenland Shark almost 400 years old
eyes radiocarbon dated
sexually mature at 150
does the shark have teeth
I can’t see inside her mouth her side eye deep
inside a costume even houses this old
are crumbling sharkskin lunar maria
inside a hidden hemisphere oldest
animal with a backbone
*
I walked alone with a white shark
on a deserted seashore the world
quiet no alert I’d been cut open
tried to swim but had been stapled
shut a red rope tattoo
three hurricanes blew through no one
at the beach I waded ankle
deep glanced out to sea
a white fin parallel to keep me company
*
I walked past a vast dark pool
out of place in a green sea entered
and in the translucent wave
before me a gray shark appeared eyes ahead
no interest in me and then another
rubbery fins ten twenty thirty fifty
sharks all on the same highway
to the massive sphere I’d passed
baitfish stuck in the shallows
a massacre of tiny silver
calm before each shark struck
wrestling little explosions
*
sometimes I lie at the water’s
edge while the incoming waves
wash over me when all my boyfriends
were bad Bethany said maybe
the ocean is your boyfriend
I like to swim at night in black
water let go of everything I fear
and in the dark only feel
the life around me I have
a tidal current too
go under rise let the ocean
lift me off my feet