Because our life was hard, we paid 
somebody else to rent our room. We heard
Japan was the place for young professionals 
to be, so we paid someone to fly us to Japan.

I was hired to kill sea life for an artwork 
about sea death, or death in its abstraction,
but the job was tough so I hired my mum
to stand at the water’s edge with the harpoon. 

In this abortive kind of way, I was a killer.
I was as much a hitman 
as the rope that threads the barrel to the barb 
is at fault for the whistling sound it makes,

which is to say, there were sharks beneath 
the water’s acetate. Formaldehyde
is heavier than dust. Because writing is hard,
I employed somebody else to write that line

and look at what a sterling job they did! 
My friends are so extremely talented it hurts. 
Especially my mother. Especially as
she dives into those concentric rings of teeth.