Big gratitude to Book of Matches for including my poem “Anthropogenic” in their new issue. (This piece is inspired by the chapter “The Shark Massacre” from Moby Dick — a book I seldom take an opportunity to invoke or celebrate (ha); and is an attempt to render our late-stage capitalist hellscape –beset with intolerance, willful ignorance, and outright aggression– as succinctly as possible).
Anthropogenic
“Queequeg no care what god made him shark.” —Moby Dick
It’s not unnatural for a shark pup, secure inside
the womb, to cannibalize its siblings—impelled
by an instinctive need to dominate, and becoming,
via murder, the most complete expression of itself.
Solitary by nature, cold-blooded experts of efficiency,
they’ll track vulnerable prey for miles, joining cousins
in a collective and remorseless act of annihilation—
an implacable machine until their edacity is sated.
But on occasion one of their own number is wounded
in the frenzied wave of teeth, and the others will turn
on it, perfecting a cycle that commenced not within
the sea but with Cain, Abel, and He who made them.
