Fish Tales
       

I

Look at her, all ocean.

Behind a neighbor's sunken house, gills glistening.

Is that a bluefish, flopping like something savage

direct from swimming lessons, at her feet?

Crossed species aside, should we

call someone? Is that a sealskin coat?

A massacre of oysters on the half shell? Is beauty

enough to ignore the fact she's not breathing?

II

She used to think the sea was omnipotent.

She prayed to its depths, and sometimes

she would float on a turquoise wave and imagine herself

a pearl in the cup of its enormous palm.

After the fourth hurricane, the one that pushed her Honda all the way

to the Pussy Cat Boutique, she realized God

was not in the sea, but in the wind, and that the wind

was a freak.

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Copyright © 2013 Maureen Seaton All rights reserved
from Fibonacci Batman
Carnegie Mellon University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission