Deadfall carcass three hundred meters deep:
Eubalaena glacialis, the right whale, soul-diving
to seabottom, its breath all gone into the world
of brine. Sharks, sea lice, and hagfish know heaven
is made of meat. They come to this cathedral
she built from her body. Snails and snot worms
assemble like angels; hosts of scavengers scuttle
down aisles of intestines, up ladders of vertebrae.
There are only seven words for “praise” and two
of them are enter and devour. Boneworms
humble themselves in the chapel of her heart,
decapods haunt her lungs’ cloisters. Creatures
born here, in the interstices of bone and blubber,
think this is the whole universe: cell-rot sky
and jaw-cave homeland, a history founded on decay.
Christopher Todd Anderson is an associate professor of English at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, where he teaches courses in American literature, creative writing, and popular culture. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Tar River Poetry, River Styx, Terrain.org, Tipton Poetry Journal, Ellipsis, Briar Cliff Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review, among others. Anderson has a poem in the 2018 Pushcart Prize XLII: Best of the Small Presses.