Anglerfish – by Siobhan Hodge
ISLAND | ONLINE ONLY
She is coming to haunt us –
an ascending angel, serrated black pillow slip,
her beacon dim as her starblind eyes
She belongs to another world, a night away, swimming closer
for one last gasp. Her dark and quiet kingdom
now humming with boat engines, pelagic shoals brush
in tender welcome. Her body, bloodied coal,
is here for one final burst.
Her horizons twist, some shrug of first impulse,
firing nerves turn upward like volcanic flow, coalesce under
perfect midnight scales, her funerary plumes.
Perhaps she glimpsed that unfamiliar sky,
read something constellating beyond the familiar flares
of her bioluminescence, her family’s stars peering back
in that secret dark. She rose from abyssal bed
to rest on glassy slab, diving into the air,
devil rising from the dark, to sleep, at last
on unknown, unblinking shore.
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Image: Museums Victoria - Unsplash
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