by Katrina Vandenberg<\/p>\n
If the best love poems have a little darkness,
how far down can I go? Thousands of feet?
The coelecanth is near, but it\u2019s too easy –
the metaphor nettable and clear, the lost
link found, the beginnings of our own bones
in its pelvic fins – and I want to write about love<\/p>\n
with depth to hold the unverifiable, the oarfish
that survives with half its body gone.
I want it to hold the giant squid no one has seen
alive, strong enough to scar sperm whales;
sailors have claimed its tentacles unfurl
from the night’s water, taking down their mates.<\/p>\n
But can such poems survive these confused witnesses?
Can they handle the scanty evidence that surfaces:
the mottled sick and dead, the night-feeding
viperfish impaling victims with fangs
at high speed, its first vertebra designed
to absorb the shock? And how much horror<\/p>\n
can this poem sustain before you forbid me to say
some call this love, the hagfish that bores
into the unsuspecting body, rasping
its flesh from inside out? Am I making you
uncomfortable? The pressure at these depths
could crush a golf ball. Are you cold?<\/p>\n
Or is it enough to be awed by the blue- by Katrina Vandenberg If the best love poems have a little darkness, how far down can I go? Thousands of feet? The coelecanth is near, but it\u2019s too easy – the metaphor nettable and clear, the lost link found, the beginnings of our own bones in its pelvic fins – and I want to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[501,574],"class_list":["post-2895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-love","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmblr.kamilah.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
green photophores of the lantern fish, the brief
and brilliant light displays? What the lights say:
I want you. Not so close. I am moonlight;<\/em>
I am not here. I would eat you raw –<\/em>
tell me if you want me to stop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"