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| 2008
ProgramAuthorsVideo
Media |
Anthony
Lawrence (from) Stingers
In the scheme of stings, bluebottles
are less than a minor irritation,
though who'd have guessed,
given their other name, the one
containing cross-boned skulls,
full-blown sails and cannon fire.
At worst, on leaving the
surf in the wake of an encounter
with a Portuguese man-of-war,
your skin will be printed
with red scribblings, such as some
molluscs and bloodworms make,
at low tide, and while the
pain is akin to having bad sunburn
raked repeatedly by fingernails,
relief is at hand: vinegar, urine,
thistle milk, or a friend
who has the fluido vitali in the gifted lives
of their palms.
But go further north, and swim without a full
body stocking
in the Arafura Sea, after heavy rain, into the path
of a
submarine bell trailing live electrical wiring, and all remedies,
tactile and beyond the physical, will be laid to waste and
rest.
A pulsing globe with solar panels and the lit filaments
of amplifier valves inside its head will oversee the forced
donation
of your epidermis to science, your central nervous
system
to the ghost crabs and the gulls. Your lower back
and thighs
will resemble a detail from an aquatint etching
of someone
flayed to ribbons by a kelp whip, its sea-leather
strands infused
with lashings of coral snake venom, and that's
just the beginning. |
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