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Sparus by Tolu Oloruntoba

Sparus                                                                                                                 

  by Tolu Oloruntoba

for Anthony Bourdain


This neural mesh, the coral brain of sads, knows

when another of us is sunk. Some speak of Grey Goo,

the mitotic mush that will eat the world. It already

has, and the Sertraline suds of our sewers

have not washed away

the denticulate scum, the flocculant armor, the rafted pleas of the river

          for blood.


Sentence the hanging trees, too, to death, then. It is only right,

to pulp their flesh, and char the ink-ed scroll. It is only right

to trace the unravelling of silicon, rappelling up the beach,

wicking an in-finite

          apron line.


Settle the shelf, then, let’s.

The reef calls our skeletons as symbiote schools

nibble them clean. Human bones

make for terrific daggers. Castoff the land,

our accreting forest, our limestone spears, our stalagmite lunges,

our congress can pierce           the belly

          of a continent.




Note: The line “Human bones make for terrific daggers” is the title

of a Newsweek article concerning anthropological studies of

New Guinea daggers.



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