We didn’t used to get this close— you’ve seen
at least one clip: great white’s pink maw carving
through a capped wave, stacked serration a blind
bite— we orchestrate a destruction that commands
our witness— I heart a shared video of surveillance
footage: bloated alligator in the aqueduct of a sewage
treatment plant, a boa constrictor thick as my thigh
wound tight, coiled through its clamped, green mouth,
both dead, still crushing— auto-scroll and from its vantage,
a snow leopard wrestles a ram to free-fall, jaws at its throat—
we did not celebrate Shark Week when we did not need
reminding of the brutal, violent facts of predation— once,
you needed to be there, in the flesh, to feel that reverence—
now we binge adrenaline: children who can’t quit the swings.