black fish, offers up his belly,
his penis for the trainers
who masturbate him
into a plastic bag
his dorsal fin flaccid in the chlorinated water,
this breeding stud
willingly gives his orca seed,
and for this white gold
is rewarded with ice-cold herring
but never a live shark or seal
as would be his way in the ocean –
such things are perhaps too grotesque
yet years
of swimming round a bathtub
and waving his pectoral fins
and soaking a captivated audience
can crack any good whale,
who roughly every decade
toys with, tastes human flesh –
an arm, a scalp, genitals
though this is rarely in the show
(First published in Driftfish anthology, Zoomorphic, 2016)
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