Where did the seal heads come from?
They were a present from a fisherman
who wished to woo the scientist.
Not an answer. A queer posy these,
a devalued currency, almost contraband.
Queer to the fisherman her request,
when he would have taken her to a dance,
or out in a boat to the island of turrs,
placed her there among the puffy chicks,
her eyes hard and cold as a gull.
And calculating now on the beach
her stance, how to accept this gift from him,
how to turn gift into transaction.
Tie them with rope in a nylon sack,
a nylon rope—chain might be better.
Make do. One makes do in the field.
She looks back at the cone of coiled rope.
Looks for snags. Feels the heft
of the bag as she starts to swing,
rhymes to it with a rock of her hips.
Thinks metronome and swinging scrotum,
then laughs as she tosses it high,
watches its weird centrifuge as it falls,
its Hockneyesque splash,
the rope feed, slacken and curl.
Everything up until now has been
a rehearsal. Time now for action,
for the crab to cock a beady eye,
tilt its way across the sea floor,
time for sea slug, for conner, for lobster,
for starfish, sculpin, and jiggling tides.
In theory, three months work by these
will strip the harbour seal heads,
leave three seal skulls fresh from the sea,
cold and clean enough to lick.
But in practice, flesh clings stubbornly
and must be picked away with a scalpel,
a job the scientist will delegate,
not wanting to relinquish objectivity.
So in latex gloves, with blade and hook
the student help sets out to unsculpt
actual flesh from actual seal. In cotton
masks they face their subjects, their eyes
dark and water-filled as they inhale
the sea’s brine and onion smell.
Tags: Issue 76