Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Had you traveled to the Greek island of Sifnos, slightly over a decade ago, you would have found me at a beachside taverna, chatting it up with my wife and the other tourists. After a delicious meal of chickpeas and mastelo, slow braised lamb cooked in white wine, I went for a swim. Not a good idea; the Meltemi winds picked up. I stroked my way into the sea but was pushed further than I wanted. I had an image of myself pulled down by a shark — utterly irrational. Seared into my brain is the scene from Jaws where a young woman’s legs blissfully kick in place — then the camera cuts to her being jolted side to side by a great white. Then, the water blushes red.

I played Jaws’ famed theme song in my head. I am not a strong swimmer. Panicked, I found myself losing breath. I flailed a bit. I yelled for help. No one heard me. I could see Didi laughing at a distance, not at me, but a joke made by our new friends. I calmed down and made my way with great effort to nearby jagged rocks.

Everywhere were urchins. As I climbed, needles poked into my hands. I yelled some more. At last, at a safe spot, I pulled the spines out of my palm. I returned to the restaurant with a bruised ego. Didi asked, What was that about? Nothing I said. Nothing.

I’ve always understood the movie Jaws as an allegory for the unknown, the hidden that could take us by surprise. Maybe it began with a childhood fear of something lurking beneath my bed. No human walks on water; we only float or swim. The massive ocean provides a startling image for all that could undo us.

As a kid, I saw Steven Spielberg’s movie Jaws in 1975. It’s 2025. I now have an app that tells me the location of sharks. I do not have what psychologists call thalassophobia, a fear of the sea, but I just want notice of which beaches to avoid, you know, just in case.

Today’s poem spotlights a speaker whose inner life is defined by a willing desire to explore the unknown, to drift further and further out into the sea.

Jaws
by Emma Hine

I don’t realize I’m starved
for the color until the blood

washes up on the beach.
I’m craving red but still

haven’t seen the creature,
just the quick whip and slither

of its tail in the wake
—and then there I am,

facing the skin side 
of the animatronic shark.

The slick apertures of its eyes.
The mythic teeth.

The anvil nose beating
the deck, cracking windows.

The shark, like the moon, is 
pockmarked, unstoppable,

never showing its hidden side.
Surely space is just another underwater,

the messages we send from satellites
a bleeding haze of infrared:

This is my blood type,
this is where I keep my body at night,

and I tell no one about the times
my body, taking over, 

stands waist-deep in the surf,
some wild need inside me

ticking into place.

“Jaws” by Emma Hine from STAY SAFE © 2021 Emma Hine. Used by permission of Sarabande Books.