A Poem: One that Got Away

This poem was written during my senior year at Williams. It was published in the Williams Literary Review, Spring of 94. I plan on using it after the "Backwards Carp" Story, in order to resonate with the "fish" imagery.

The One that Got Away
Boxed in water
drowned in glass
the gourami eyes the green
that frosts the walls
its only food in years.

It knows the lay
of shit-stained gravel
just by the touch of
whiskers that drag limp.
Here, neglected plastic aquarium mesas,
gaudy hiding places for
this fish that no one sees.
There, in the far corner,
the charcoal filter
that lost its breath,
air pipes stuffed by age,
algae arteriosclerosis.

Outside
sits the same sad boy,
still trying to capture
the Perfect Fish
with crayon lines,
the one that will hook
his parents’ eyes,
the one that will keep them
from getting away.
It slip-slithers like slick scales
before fingers that grip too tightly,
glitters behind seaweed fronds
in his mind.
A frown draws his hard lips shut.

“Look at me,” mouths
the gourami over and over,
unnoticed.

Its wish comes true one day,
for the first time in years.
Its brilliant smell gives it away.
Lying in webs behind the shelf
its spine frozen in the arc
of its last and only silver leap.
Its belly is up,
open to a blind corner of the ceiling
far above.

The father wraps it up
in last week’s edition.
The boy returns
to his crayons.
Tired of fish,
he grinds a fresh pink scrape,
tip of a tentacle,
with puckered suckers
that he hopes
will wrap,
grip,and never let go.