Caught in Bruce’s Mouth
Emily O’Neill

We spent my first Jaws summer landlocked
which was good, because fear wore off
quick. I replaced it with close study.

How the size. Why the jaw. New Jersey
beach terror of 1916. Bull. Rogue. Frenzy.
My father said the sound went mostly empty

the year the fiction broke. Shaw wrote
his own monologue. Indianapolis capsized,
ocean a sharp grave: death by thirst,

death by salt, death by shark. No beach
for me. Just a lake’s mucky lips. Lucas’s head
caught in Bruce’s mouth. Amity’s hysteria

a spring wound back on itself. I sat, rapt,
hungry for jerk and pull and scream. Tape
trapped in VCR—rewinding.