watch them carefully; wait until they touch you before you do anything. When they kneel in the soft coral sand between the tufts of turtle grass, they can no longer easily swim away, throw your tentacles outside these basket sponge bodies and snag them before they can escape. Their aroma is irresistible, their taste, addictive. We shall have them all.

 Tonight, we go ashore. We will usurp the human’s world.

John C. Mannone has work in North Dakota Quarterly, Le Menteur, 2020 Antarctic Poetry Exhibition, and others. He won the Jean Ritchie Fellowship (2017) in Appalachian literature and served as celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and others. http://jcmannone.wordpress.com https://www.facebook.com/jcmannone/