by Kathryn Reilly
All hail the ocean’s great connoisseurs
who for centuries ingested every thing:
they care not if a feast was mine or yours
enjoying hoof, scale, hand, and wing.
A shark’s stomach is a record of the age
Neolithic friends ate just fish and nets
but descendants today munch monsters galore
for the ocean hosts creatures we cannot gauge;
hiding deep in the depths shore to shore
sharks munch our mutants without regrets.
Autopsied stomachs clearly reveal
suits of armor to technology
but did not find their Achilles’ heel:
sharks possess amazing biology.
To date they enjoyed whole polar bears
and Draugen meat — they do not discriminate;
they’ve dined on Ilomba and a rubber boot
and fur coats belonging to wealthy heirs —
clearly their menus do not constipate:
an enviable evolutionary attribute.
Sharks outlived earth’s mythic dinosaurs
500 different species strong today;
having survived all humanity’s wars,
humans should prostrate and pray.
What we haven’t captured lies in living sharks
coveted evidence we’ve searched to find:
lifeforms advanced beyond our own
these hunters of the deep leave many marks
on the greatest storied monsters of mankind
escaping by sacrificing flesh and bone.
Sharks’ rumbling stomachs hold our greatest hopes:
chomped fragments of great Amabie beaks,
the gills of fabled aquatic lycanthropes
and Leviathan’s teeth in all their mystique.
They cut through Ayia Napa’s meaty fins
and rib-like structures numbering sixty-nine;
They crunch on Steller’s Sea Ape’s skull hollow-eyed
and Kraken’s tentacles’ rough, battered skins.
The evidence is clear and quite crystalline —
Oh Sharks, lead us where cryptid creatures hide!
By day, Kathryn helps students investigate the power of words and master grammar’s awesomeness. In the evenings, she reads retold myths, fairy tale mash-ups, and fae adventures when she isn’t breathing life into new ones herself. Her most recent work appears in Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas and Last Leaves literary journal. You can find her on Instagram @katecanwrite to see
what’s coming next. Her two rescue mutts, Savvie and Roxy Razzamatazz, hear all the stories first.
