Poetry: The Whale by Cassandra Farrin
Cassandra Farrin’s poem rustles with the sound of waves and devils. “The Whale” is exactly how you make surprising a literary figure so well known as to be automatically cliche in lesser hands. Let the lines fill your mouth with brine and flame, the white space like gaps between the waves, the Whale: freshly ambiguous.
The Whale
Born bright, a lemon jarredin brine and oil pales;
so it was with mein the deep,
but this is a darker matter.Say of me “men dream and drown,”
an unfathomable vastness, adrift.Who lives who impales the moon?
Would you cradle the devilin bottles and fonts,
hawk perfume and the clean-burning flameof a demon?
Up close I’m no delicacy;prized from afar,
now I’m a tuska battering rama shroud.
The Sun isn’t gold;neither am I.
We both brood in an airless spacein secret, burn—
He on highI in the depths,
both tow an ill-fated crewto a common end
caught up as by a madman’s whim.Call me what I am.
Cassandra Farrin
Cassandra Farrin is a poet, adoptive parent, and editor of nonfiction books on the history of religion. Her writing has appeared in Cirque, concīs, the Plath Poetry Project, the Ploughshares blog, and elsewhere. Learn more about her on the blog Ginger & Sage (ginger-and-sage.org) and on Twitter: @CassaCassaCassa.
