Meghan Phillips "The One Who Wasn’t Attacked, Goes to Help the One Who Was - Five Jaws Erasures"

The town killed

Safe as the Fourth of July,

       as going home again.

 

Something to hide,

                   to listen to.

​

Something you felt too much.

 

Source: Jaws by Peter Benchley; Doubleday, Garden City, NY: 1974. pg. 48 – 9.

​

Brody cut

The phone, the guy—

            his fingers on the problem.

The boy, the fish—

             looking for action,

wondering whether you might call.

​

Source: Jaws by Peter Benchley; Doubleday, Garden City, NY: 1974. pg. 220.

​

Ellen snapped

Show me—

pearls

slacks

hands

an oceanographer

a fish.

 

Find—

that young man

a drink

the rocks around your neck.

 

Look for—

fingers, sticking inside

a finger, no—

a hand, no—

a bone like a gun
on a weeknight, dark
blue and nice.

 

Tell me—I’m right:

he had better slow down.

 

Source: Jaws by Peter Benchley; Doubleday, Garden City, NY: 1974. pg. 136 – 9.

​

Brody gazed

Figure one: bald as a rifle barrel—

the slick trickle, the sting turned neutral.

 

Source: Jaws by Peter Benchley; Doubleday, Garden City, NY: 1974. pg. 232.

​

Ellen smiled

Anything can be something.

That oceanographer. That summer

 

kid. Living rich, angry. The type

this town can’t see.

 

Source: Jaws by Peter Benchley; Doubleday, Garden City, NY: 1974. pg. 107.

​

Bio:

Meghan Phillips is the author of the forthcoming chapbook, Abstinence Only (Barrelhouse). She is the editor-in-chief of Third Point Press and an associate editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. You can find her writing at meghan-phillips.com, and her tweets @mcarphil.