*Vintner’s note: a smarter person than me suggested that fledgling magazines should publish original content in order to give potential submitters a sample of their preferences. Here’s me putting my money where my mouth is.

I hope you appreciate my efforts.

 

Danger! Danger! Harpoons are upon her –
Us! Us! Leviathan America:
Sperm whale, punctured and moored by her own spur,
Bartered without care to any stranger.
Danger! Leviathan America! 

At sea: Cannibal of Democracy.
See how she grows fat: guzzling her krill
Past her fill. Terror on the open sea:
A Fifty-foot blubber-laden danger.
Stranger! Leviathan America!  

She: ravenous for ivory and oil,
She: sells her calf to Ahab for a helm,
She: stalks the seas for leaky heads of spoil.
Have you seen that? A whale captain a ship?
Watch the leviathan spear her own kin,
Overladen with sin, she grows greater.
Traitor! Leviathan America! 

Mutiny! Mutiny on the high sea!
No barter left! She sold her sweet plunder.
She sold all her oil for all her blubber.
She sold her blubber for her ivory.
She sold her ivory for her harpoons.
She sold her harpoons for her ambergris.
She sold her ambergris for drops of oil.  

And her ship rattles as the tempest howls,
And her crew flees as the storm cleaves her bow.
And all the sharks and orcas and krakens
Circle the overladen cetacean
With harpoons of her own perverse making.
Lashing, Lancing her ‘till the chop foams red
From her leaky head: weeping blood and dread
Rancid failure: curdled over us – her!
Hunted and drowned at our hand, our mother.
Mother! Leviathan America!