Skip to content →

Poet Wrestling with Bunnicula in the Challenger Deep

Deep sea will be the last place without borders. If they

have their way. Will never find. Or name. Most life. Here

has no eyes or ears.

& no pleasures they

claim. More men have floated. Through outer space. Than

four leagues beneath. They claim. Everything. Is their death

-trap. Exclusively. & tense. & sinking.

But we know ways beyond. Our

tunnels aquatic. Coming. Undone.

Oh wet & sweet. Vampire bunny.

They’ll never grasp. Hold or sour

on little bunny-powered. Nautilus. Tearing through blue

& luminous. & vamping. In bunny darkness. How bare skin

thirsts through neoprene. Is how you breathe me.

& freely. Is it possible. To explode without

moving? The lovely spite

of nitrogen. For oxygen.

& what building

pressure does to chemistry.

Altering what a body. Can

take. Breaking my neck without even. Biting. How little

they know us, my salty. Vampire bunny. & our dwelling

breathless. & unseen.

Entwining on ocean floor

where they think all there’s to suck

are rotting whale bones. & molten

core. Unreached. Is what presses

my neck. To your teeth. Without taking. Further & deftly.

What I could give, tightly. & at such. Depths. How we get

each other. To come. For. & Against.

We come. Without moving. We come

as the only thing

unmoving

at the bottom of the sea.

Untouched.

&. Undiscovered.

from If This Is the Age We End DiscoveryFind more by Rosebud Ben-Oni at the library

Copyright © 2021 Rosebud Ben-Oni
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

Published in Poems Rosebud Ben-Oni

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.