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?