In the hadal zone the pressure
that would crush our skulls is nothing

to these untended tadpoles, slick testicular
heads and fillet-tails, comets of white silk rippling

easily where the water comes down hard.
Pectoral fins make ribbed and pleated skirts

with which to curtsey and fan
the body round the meal again: pill-bugs

pulled with maws of blunt cusps
from a tin-coloured mackerel corpse.

In these trenches you can skimp on muscle
and bone, be buoyed by cheap fill

you make yourself, dress yourself
in rice-paper skin that flaunts

your guts, the blush lump of your brain.
You can shoulder a thousand atmospheres

and weather the squall of a late marine snow: specks
of shit and soot and cells dropping

down the water columns, flecks
of the dead innumerable.

This poem responds to these two scientific articles:

Gerringer, M.E., Drazen, J.C., Linley, T.D., Summers, A.P., Jamieson, A.J. & Yancey, P.H. 2017.
Distribution, composition and functions of gelatinous tissues in deep-sea fishes. Royal Society Open Science. 4:171063. DOI:10.1098/rsos.171063.