Angles and angels – look
into the water just right and you’ll see
how carp, pale and bloated,
resemble the floating bodies
of the dead, how their lips open
and close, trying to communicate
some secret of the deep. Notice
how the billowing heads of jellyfish
are nothing more than ghosts, the laments
that leak from hollow shells.

Everyone looks up when searching
for the afterlife, believing the stars
can provide something more than
simple navigation. But the ocean,
that Precambrian womb, is both mother
and murderer. Ancient mariners,
those poor missionaries, told stories
of a creature so colossal no one
could believe them: eyes as big as oak
caskets, an uncanny sense of their journey,
the strips of tentacles they offered
as proof, the length it must have on that arm.

Jennifer Gresham has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Maryland. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in several journals, including Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New York Quarterly, and The Atlanta Review, among others. Her poetry has also been featured on Garrison Keillor's NPR radio show, "The Writer's Almanac." She is the author of two collections: Explaining Relativity to the Cat, a chapbook from Pudding House Press, and Diary of a Cell, winner of the 2004 Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize.
More information on Jennifer Gresham’s new book
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