comes shrieking out of the mist,
a havoc of papery skin stretched tight
over chitin and doom. The hull
gongs like a dungeon door;
in the empty skull a slave galley
drives the infernal engines below.
Fell lights glow in the occular cavities,
black smoke trailing
from a trepanned scalp.
She clatters out of London, chewing through
the Midlands, steaming North;
her breath like coal and soured milk.
She is iron and brass and the gut ropes of the Forever Lost.
She salts the earth and makes birds drop from the sky.
And still, the lash cracks somewhere deep in her throat.
Bronzed men pull on oars.
She advances, seething.
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