When the shark happened into waters
too shallow,
the swimmers headed for shore, screaming his name.

They looked back to see his lethargic fin
tilting above water
like an empty bag, like slow steam.

They ventured toward him, splashing the sea side
of him. He moved closer
to shore. They moved closer to him, slapping

the water with float tubes, with the bare
flat of their hands
until the shark's belly hit sand, and he panicked

and he rolled, flipped his tail in the air
and twisted his rough body
until it wrinkled at its crease. He fell back.

The swimmers feeling safe drew near enough
to touch him,
to push him, to roll him over like driftwood

with eyes, which on either side could likely almost see
the nothing floating in
like haze. A man with a bandana tied around

his head came from shore with a fence post
and began beating
the head of the shark with blows that sounded

like blurred, distant hammers building the frame of a house.
Others came behind him
with sticks and beat down on the shark,

and with each blow, his eyes rotated wildly
in their orbits, and a bit
of air hissed out through those famous and white teeth.

They beat him, threw coke bottles at him, kicked him
long after the shark
was dead. If it had been dark, the bodies

of these bathers would have lit up like neon,
like sparks from wires
with all the pleasure of each hit against the darkness,

against that fearful, sharp mouth and its gullet. It sizzled.
It burst. It was the center
of all force. Perhaps they thought this would make them

feel somehow better, that something small would lift
from them like a black
inner tongue, that when they looked up

from the misshapen body, the day around them would—
in the flat, apparent noon—
be less filled with the common threat inside them all.

I guess it’s different for a man;
the pregnancy lasted nine years.
My daughters came out full-grown
with all their teeth like Athena.
There was no bleeding, though the blood
spilled under skin. I suppose my flesh
tore in ways it was not meant to.
I was not designed to be a mother.

The labor lasted through the term,
always the desire to push, always the pain,
someone cracking my ribs with an oak dowel.
Their mother drank herself sterile
then disappeared before the birth like the scent
of ether from the anesthesiologist slipping
into my lungs, disappeared like a bad father
and left me with the squealing tissue of embryos.

I have to admit I enjoyed the swelling fullness,
despite the ache. I liked the way I felt their hair
grow long inside my belly ripe to distortion,
how I heard them in there talking to one another
at night when I was trying to sleep, their legs growing
into the pockets of my hips. They kept
asking me to keep the lights on. They begged me
to play music that would soothe them.

Two years later, I’m still counting their fingers
and toes, still checking the shapes of their heads
to see if they are misshapen by unusual birth,
if the plates of their skulls have finally fused,
but their hands are perfect little leaves,
and their animal eyes stew days into their brains.
I am satisfied, lucky.

                                I’ve been sewn from jaw to thigh,
where they parted two sides of my body with a dull ax
to get them out. I am healing like a lightning strike.
All that birthing space inside is filled with fluid,
luminous as an exact dream, so I can never be in the dark.
There is always light coming from the skin of my womb.

I suppose we’re meant to feel some kind of triumph,
but these years later, I only see the dead, those stone skulls,
the eyes turned to air, green bee dipping inside and floating
away. This one shows a “German Cemetery Blown up by Shell,”
remains re-exposed to daylight, as opposed to the underground
light of being and all its sparkle. Even when the spirit’s gone
bones dent soil like quartz.

                                                       Undug, redundant bombs
exposed the most private, no longer necessary privacy, the inside
of a head, anonymous, as they all are, useless names, the quick flutter
of death. There’s a helmet with windows, empty boot by that head
disarranged parts like an impossible puzzle, the ball
of a femur stuck (unbelievable) near the mouth.

                                                       That cloud
is shaped like a boy, I think— yes, it is a boy. See how he draws
his hand to his cheek. He is wearing a sweater. I think
I see a dog’s head resting in his lap. A cloud is a skull,
the property of recognition in a thing unlike a thing, no longer
the thing it was. It resembles a body unassembled, and we imagine
its animation, a marionette, the strings attached to this bone,
to this, suspended into the semblance of a man.

                                                       Make him talk.
No really, make him say something. There, it sounds like
it’s really coming from his mouth, I mean from the one
who was killed once, the German, I mean, then blown up
again, out of the grave. What would he say? Blow another breath
into him. He’s so inarticulate now. Listen, like blowing
over a bottle and not quite getting a tone. He seems to be saying
there is nothing to describe or there is nothing left to say.
He is neither cat nor dentist, a collection of whittled sticks, maybe,
placenta dried into a vessel for water, tattooed with the name
of a little girl, a pocket of lint, tire track, snip of white lace.

A thousand hats floated in the sea,
and the car keys dropped as expected, deep
like metallic and insane birds.
Yellow and blue schools of fish watched,
quietly amazed at all the commotion,
the waving arms, the kicking,
the water screams, and the money
floating from wallets like wet kites.

It was a day for water
to remember, all that consciousness
dissolved like boats of crystal sugar,
the sweet sea churning with thought,
churning with the last, thousand moments
of terror, each as horrifying as being
in this world can be, each intricate
and precise.