Floating out of sight under the boat’s rim, waiting for the end. Pain in his hammered tail, bleeding on the chains, but he thought, Glory, glory, and remembered richly textured gray skin, the smooth flow of ridgéd spines. Twisting and snapping, such power, he’d fly far away to race through favorite waters, to moan with pleasure at the tourists’ legs. Ah, the sensual free of it, the rich give and throw of the water and the wild left turns, they made his hearts cry out with overdoubled joys. Could he only cruise the beaches, coast the coastline, or shift gears in the shallows, taste once again the ecstasy of the golden flesh of slow beach-goers! The beauty of it, more than could ever be borne or made, and surely he would escape at last. His teeth would stay forever sharp, and his hearts would pump, his stomachs roar at the knives’ edges of the waves, the silver boats’ bottoms, the warm blood and the cries of legless children, O.
[Los Angeles, 5/9/90-8/27/92]
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