Underwater Elegy

First presented as part of These Frozen Moments, an installation curated and produced by Kieran Swann, The Good Room collective (2017) and remounted at Flowstate (2018).
Photography by Dave D’Arcy

String me up by my ankles, all bone and barnacled

meat. Scoop out my guts strawberry-ice-cream-style

licking your lips, serrated silver spoon in hand, trace me

with your surgeon’s scalpel, teeth dug deep, finding

the coral reef of my silted ribcage, anchored in whispers

of salt. Reanimated corpses move slower than in real life

frozen to the marrow, combing almost imperceptibly

through the backwash, slurring their words, speaking

only in spittle. String me up by my piñata mortality

some fragile sea mobile of primary-coloured fish, swing

at my cardboard carcass with hand and foot. Corded

limbs sagging on display, real boy bleeding false candy:

bile of brine and fish skeletons. Eat what you can, bury

the rest, wash the fumes from your pruned fingers.

Do not commemorate this little nothing death.