When you were a kid, you swore fish could
only live in blue water because you were
perceptive and clinging to a set of beliefs
that wouldn’t even be lucky enough to be
your first lesson in loss. No, that privilege
belongs to the goldfish dying in water thick
with blue food dye. Why life is always
harder than it is on TV I’ll never understand
and hopefully neither will you. I collected
all my baby teeth because I thought this
group, this type of a group had not been
given a name. A cavling, I called them. This
I said, is a cavling of teeth. And I would shake
them all around the Ball jar and holler
whenever they hit the metal lid. I did these
things for attention. The things I do now
are also for attention. In fact, beneath the
title of this poem should be an epigram that
reads, for Attention. This is the most true
poem I’ve ever written and I’ve mentioned
but half the stuff I can remember. I tried
here to find something that could rhyme with
my own nostalgia, and only came up with
with fibromyalgia. I’m sick and tired. I am
having my sleep disturbed by thousands
of goldfish bellies floating in a blue ocean.
Let’s talk about dreams like we mean them
like they aren’t just general plagiarisms
of our favorite Bible verses. Mary serves
no purpose apart from being Mary and that
seems unfortunate. I learned lots of lessons
from the Bible, but the only one I really cling
to is what happens to us when we are swallowed
whole by a great fish. Why, I ask, why do I
keep ending up in the stomach of everything
that I love? Why am I always finding myself
here?