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Poems

Spermaceti

By Jennifer Martelli From Issue No. 3

A black sperm whale cow curves toward me in the sky

and it is night.

A harpoon sticks out from under her thick jaw trailing the line

and there are stars.

The dog. The hunter. The virgin.

Barnacles encrust her belly and fatty haunch

and I look through windows.

She drops her ambergris skat over my home

and I smell lavender, sweet rot.

Waxy white spermaceti milk spills from her mind, spills too from her teats

and I dream.

(She heard my dreams, all of them: they made sound waves, her mind

is ten times the size of mine).

About Jennifer Martelli More From Issue No. 3