Corpse Whale

Ceprano Man

4 I. Ceprano Man 900,000 years ago fled madly toward the hills on foot like a phantom how do you tell if weeks or moments go by in the beginning not seeing but knowing the rocks like words a millennium of chalk marks and light on the inside image and art like dusk on the outer-skin of a cave like a flick or flint scratch on the stone of man someone here there roaming the rim the gilded sun of home 5 a thawing ice house the raven’s nest flaming whale ribs saber-tooth tigers eyeteeth incised petrified yellow forests 6 II. Wolves and hyenas—after crushing bones flavor-suck the marrow of their prey they like to inhale the egg yolk leave fragments of skeletons and rough skulls eyeless panting ggrr growling gggrrr canines know when you keep tripping at your weakest fumbling on those robust bones which keep laughing those bones old—bones of Ceprano clacking at the center of earth and echoing the hills. 7 III. A fiend dog squints his incisors just far enough away to create space between us looking for pieces of pumice to rub out the phlegm to throw lightly on the wind It’s surprising how much you feel when you find a skull cap of an infant in the desert on taiga as if roaming roaming with distemper in Kamina-Zaire or Kivalina-Alyeska hear them laughing those bones bones a baby’s brain capacity 8 seething as you hold it in your hands like a fossil finger the ridge of its brow. Does it feel warm like mine? 9 IV. Wolves and Hyenas like stalking stalking their pride on light padded-paws they hunt together like uncles and cousins in an umiak skin boat or like brothers with black feet on a lion sand savannah or in a dust devil dancing waiting for breath bubbles to surface suspecting a clutch around the neck dragging across grit snow with hounding blood teeth like a harpoon striking a place of pulse a blowhole 10 or a long limber tail with raised haunches in mukluks in Africa our old home or with bare-feet fleeing to Alaska our new boreal forest. ...