Black-Tipped Shark
black-tipped shark
whose underwater altars
and temples built
of lava and coral
hold sacrificial offerings
of what? well, don’t ask—
we all feel
things we can’t control
that bite, whose razor teeth
are designed to rip, to rend, to gulp
and satisfy a hunger
that is so vast
it fills the water-burdened trenches
between this island and the next
that is so sharp
a thousand fishing hooks
cannot compete
that tells a story
so terrible and inevitable
that we can only hope
to step back into the chorus
and be ignored by fate
©2024 Miriam Sagan All rights reserved.
Miriam Sagan is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and memoir. Her most recent include Castaway (Red Mountain, 2023) and A Hundred Cups of Coffee (Tres Chicas, 2019). She is a two-time winner of the New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards as well as a recipient of the City of Santa Fe Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and a New Mexico Literary Arts Gratitude Award. She has been a writer in residence in four national parks, Yaddo, MacDowell, Gullkistan in Iceland, Kura Studio in Japan, and a dozen more remote and interesting places. She works with text and sculptural installation as part of the mother/daughter creative team Maternal Mitochondria (with Isabel Winson-Sagan) in venues ranging from RV parks to galleries. She founded and directed the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College until her retirement. Her poetry was set to music for the Santa Fe Women’s Chorus, incised on stoneware for two haiku pathways, and projected as video inside an abandoned building during the pandemic under the auspices of Vital Spaces.