belly of the beast, by Cullen Goldblatt
Jonah says:
I gag on whale bile. I shut my eyes and pretend that tumbling liquid is not stomach acid seeping
through my closed mouth. Does the whale ever sleep? I imagine a whale shit escape:
a quick propulsion to freedom through whale tubes like sausage casing out to brine. I cough up
acid in the red dark lonely and wish I could want to choke on sea.
I don't know if they threw me or I jumped, I don't know if I believe. Choking on salt water on
the burning acid of whale water either way I taste my own bile. I breathe to the beat of whale
chest it is my sea it puts me to sleep at night. I just don't think about being swallowed. I think
about counting when I get scared of god's faces and the seconds between my breath and its.
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Cullen Goldblatt lives and writes and translates in New York. He learns from many writers, in particular, African poets Leon Gontran Damas and Patrice Nganang.
Image: Mosh Kashi. Mosh Kashi (www.nogagallery.co.il) affines his work to romantic modernism: Rothko, Nauman, and their 19th century European ancestors. Beyond the preoccupation withnature, Kashi's paintings bind the experience of the sublime-romantic with a postmodern allegorical consciousness.
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