The Undetonated Nazi Bomb Opens a Red Eye On the Ocean Floor

and the starfish, believing the eye to be
the madreporite of another starfish,
or a sister,

punctures the metal-light
in search of companionship
or at least, sustenance. Forty thousand

other animals pile into a veil
over the bomb, as if seeking
its origin point.

Once other man-made machinery (and this time,
able to breathe underwater)
discover the animals, scientists
are shocked, the starfish
less so,

since there is little discovery in
excavation:

It is not unlike the wilderness
to feed on violence.
Remember:

the starfish acts by
instinct. Animals hunt
for food, humans
for rhetoric.

What do we make
of killing, or choosing
its abstention? We conduct massacres and end up only
with more explanations for living. Violence produces

life produces violence.

Yes, hunting is a sport. Yes,
war is too.

The starfish believes there is more
to life than humans know, but chooses
survival.

When exposed by the unmanned submarine,
the starfish holds one
of its five arms out—not as an offering,
but as if to say, no, no,
this is not a gun.

                       *In response to recent discoveries

*

Mingyu 明宇 Brian Chan is currently a first-year undergraduate studying at Princeton University. His work appears in Split Lip, wildness, The Emerson Review, and more.