And the explorer asks, “Eyes? Why should
he have eyes?”
The submarine radiates silver.
“Merely to see phosphorescence?” In reprise,
Like gum in your mouth, like jumping rope
on the playground, silver –
So said the explorer – in the dirt and
the clouds, silver.
At the deepest of the trench
Were flatfish, their hearts ripe for silver
(The shade of Jupiter’s winds, the stench
Of daydream and discovery.) Wrenched
from the diseased gut of Mariana’s body:
A vehicle so juniper and tawdry!
Man-made and wanting endlessly, it tensed
And with the submarine’s light going off
like a cough,
the explorer hears Mariana scoff.