Downstairs, dolphins eat minnows, schoolgirls shriek, And dirty water gets them cold. A creak Upstairs, the escalator steps spread flat To marble tile. The hallways echo, matte. Hushes are palpable. Blue lights loom dim And glass reflects the fish. They never swim Or float, but hang as if translucent strings Dangle from a puppet master’s hands, no swings Or sways. The electric eel, like a ponytail Just cut, falls round, loops big. His sliding scale Bodes seizures, volts, charged minus, plus, the prey Of a thousand aimless eyes dare straightaway In opposite directions—iris black, Pupil black. Think; if you could break and ply The ball out from the socket, gouge the eye Apart, it’d leak a piceous plasma in The murky water, ribbons, floss, lace-thin Eels birthed from ovate wombs. The angler gapes. One fish. Two fish. The filtered air reshapes The fixed depiction. Three fish. Four. And still Resumes. Red fish. Blue fish. A Rockcod’s gill Yawns open. Damselfish say, Take me, Take… Pie Jesu. Black mollies borrow sake From Pete and pity. Every fish stands there Legless, their eyes rolled back, a mal de mer Mellifluous and motionless: a turn Without a turn, a gag without the burn- ing swallow. Mercy—one fish, two—the sea Of artifice and animality Distends and flattens: my own face and three Bubbles from a barb as if to say, This is me. by Erica Dawson |
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