like Jonah i live within the leviathan
mine is made of steel
gobbled me up along with its voracious
appetite for refined petroleum.
through the glass holes in its ribs
i look down through haze
tiny fields covered in November snow
probably upstate New York
my whale belches me out in Denver
in Los Angeles
in London
each time, hurling me into a world
warmer than the one it ate me in.
i know it is wrong to ride in the
belly of a sky whale
an undead skeleton raised from the soulless
bones of a crab-picked carcass
whose untimely descent to the sea floor heralded
“the last of something beautiful”
but i am comfortable here
because i am no longer comfortable anywhere
only “everywhere” is comfortable for me now
so i live in a dead whale
a hungry dead whale that eats ancient life
to soar grotesquely, endlessly
back and forth, back and forth.