Three Poems

Three Poems BY ELIZABETH SCHULTZ “Will He Perish?” Moby-Dick, Ch. 105 In Goto-reto, where we pass into the belly of the whale, his ribs rise in arched memorial over centuries of cetacean spirits. In Nagoya, where children enter the jaws of a plastic yellow whale to explore dimensions beyond themselves, small voices swell with surprising resonance. In Osaka, beneath murals glorifying reef fish, we are dished up his crispy skin, seared and grilled and bombed for scientific research. C
2006 The Authors Journal compilation C
2006 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 63 E L I Z A B E T H S C H U L T Z Ishmael Imagines Japan Locked and bolted, Japan, to Ishmael, was a dark hold, inhabited by outlaws, tiger-yellow barbarians, Beelzebub’s cronies. He’d met a grizzled sea-drifter in his time, however, and believed he could be social with a horror. Ahab at Pearl Harbor Approaching his target, the old man raised his warrior’s visor. A connoisseur of beauty, he gazed into the sky’s bowl of cerulean blue. In its depths, nostalgia evoked a swashbuckling boy slashing alien demons. Riding his own divine wind, he revved his engines and aimed for the heart of whiteness. 64 L E V I A T H A N ...