Leviathan

We tread in the depths of your dinner-plate eye, whose woeful gaze sears us with its light, exposing our sins like the oculus in the rotunda of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. You cannot cry as we do. You have no tear ducts to shed your sorrow. But when we withdraw the lily iron from your flank, you wail a dirge such as men have never known. We are sobered in an instant, reflecting on who we are, what is what, and the marvel of God’s creations. Though we have fasted since dawn, our appetite escapes us as we hoist the harpoon into the dinghy, blood and blubber on our boots. The sun kisses the water, dancing pink upon the horizon. Like the dying day, you expire, killing us with your final breath, taking what remains of our souls, drowning our pride now that the fight is over. When the emerald water turns red, shark fins break the churning surf. Gulls scream. The captain claps our backs. We drink watered whisky, glasses of grog, lemon on our lips as we kiss the back of our hands, thinking of our wives, our children, and evermore the songs echoing from the deep.

Sirens

On a God-forgotten atoll, where the crabs vie for every inch of belched necrotic rock, a wreath of white skeletons breaks the blue lagoon like a crescent moon in the daytime sky. Behold! The tiara of death discarded by Salacia. It breaks the waves, festooned with broken ships and bearded skulls, mouldering sails like sloughed lizard skin draping masts and bones on the fringes of a tropical, volcanic paradise. The iguanas swim like fish. The fish fly like gulls. The gulls scream and do a great deal of shitting. Above the din of Gaia’s gastric ash—the pounding waves and churning foam, the hiss of molten stone as it grazes the palms, the kiss of magma as its red lips peck the sea—a requiem finds the ears of mariners, filling their briny hearts, their very souls stuffed to the gills. A lament corrupts each gentle zephyr, every category of storm—a melody that cannot be denied. It is choral (not coral), and it is lovely. It calls to ships, men and monsters alike. Horatio Nelson or Edward Teach. White sails or black. There is no discrimination in death. Sharks converge. Whales convene. Terns and gulls blot out the heavens, enough to fill the Colosseum. In the genuine tale, Odysseus died of heartbreak.

Crabs

With sand dollar nipples and starfish paws, she tread the waves, weaving through jellyfish and bobbing for coconuts. The moon was low and the tide was receding. There were turtles everywhere—life emerging from the sand. There were crabs and kisses, which she gave to me. I was too greedy to care. I wanted more. She didn’t mind my thinning hair, how it exposed my scalp in the parting of my cowlick. She didn’t laugh when my shorts came off in the pool, nor when I surfaced from the deep end, shriveled and small. It was 1995 and Hale-Bopp gleamed in the sweat on her thighs. When she stood, there were stripes on her back; lines where the sun chair had left its imprint. I tallied the gaps, counting years and anniversaries. But it didn’t work out like that. Back home, I watch sports—another early playoff exit. It went to extra innings, but it came to an end on an error. I’m used to this heartache, which has become casual over the years. It didn’t work out, but there’s always next season.  





James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Reckon Review, and elsewhere. His 2nd collection, Fish Out of Water, is forthcoming from Anxiety Press.

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