by Michael James Martin

helicopter camera beach-comb

caught on horizontal sand-gibbet, caught on

bellydown past tense Whalebone

drooling plankton while off the beach-head

palm-shielded eyes watch

local officials with sticks

tempted to poke

the county explosives expert

drinking Bavarian beer,

completely unsure: How many pounds

of trinitrotoluene

does it take to fill this thing up?

Vermouth better than Bavarian?

Get serious.

Her beer discarded she sniffs a TNT tin-cap.

Slight acacia smell. And it‘s…

button-click boom-plume

so unfish, so not of this order,

this tremendous exploding whale

so invader of our terrarium, so mammalian cousin vomited by the sea,

if only you could look to the sky, to the thin red ocher fringe streaming,

to the polyethylene like film of bladder and blowhole and interior gum,

if only you could look.

Look.

It‘s raining you.