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This poem is taken from PN Review 225, Volume 42 Number 1, September - October 2015.

Two Poems Martin Monahan
Whale fall


Its heart is a room, a private thun-ump fat-subsumed and moving
in an all-ocean. A ventricled suspension bridge. Massive,
unangled, propelled past death; when the heart stops
the sad volume is still compelled by the dumb physics of its breadth,

till forces perpendicularise, and it sink-glides from
the knowable canopy, down. Down through uncolouring
to manna a lesser world. A cetic eschatology
arriving, prophesied in the contingencies of its

evolving: complex systems enmotioned
by the input of this singular component. Down. Down through distance,
knowledge reversing, life without taxonomy, organisms
unnamed. The meat-tonnage dropping. A lift shaft upended,

a tug scuttled. The dead whale salts, veins water. Its heart
is a weighted tank. It deep drifts solo, soundless, the magnificence
of its echo-circuitry cut. The floor fumes minerals, solute-clouds
...


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