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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