This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2020 Spring Print Edition. 2020 poetry winner, selected by Safia Ehillo.
Illustration by Mitali Khanna Sharma
The beauty of it, I think, is in its formlessness—
how the flesh of the anglerfish wavers, not unwavelike,
as it traverses the waters of the deep benthic zone,
unharnessed from the greater laws
that govern the more worldly forms
that light, less effortfully, the brighter waters above—
This world is called DEEP OCEAN DWELLERS
and is much darker than CARIBBEAN REEF,
where, at these less sunny hours,
the sea turtles sleep on a small stretch
of synthetic sandy beach. As for my angler,
all that keeps me from it
is one inch of sturdy glass.
In dreams, I’d find a wetsuit or mallet
and know that I could touch it,
could close my fist around its illicium and pull—
But the anglerfish, exile
of the ocean, knows no violence
like this, not the brilliant shock of a human hand.
All it knows is the light that hangs
unfailingly before its eyes, and the glass that keeps me
from it. For its many years it will follow its esca,
dutiful lamp-light it has carried since birth. No,
the beauty of it, I think, is in its piety—
The anglerfish swims believing
that as long as this light stays lit, no hunger will ever be
endless. If the anglerfish had words,
would it deny me this? Would it sing?
If it were me, would it not extend an arm
and take its esca in its fist,
cradling that ordinary light, like a minor God,
in its ordinary palm, saying beauty, beauty...
In dark uneven waters, is there no reason to know me?
David Ehmcke is a recent graduate of Columbia College. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Deluge, The Columbia Review, and elsewhere. In spring 2020, he received Quarto's Poetry Prize; the Brick Prize for his play FEED; and received the John Vincent Hickey Prize for an essay that studies Ariana Reines’s A Sand Book, new media, and the occult. A current Henry Evans Fellow, David will travel to London in 2021 to begin a book project in the British Museum that investigates curation, museology, and the poetics of the museum.