FISH

The fantails swiveled through the camouflage of plants

In her living room;

Feasting on a shaking sibling bellying up at the bottom

Of the bulb-like bowel,

She had no net to scoop it out,

Resolved to feed the rest in ways she felt they did

In placid lily ponds through murky Asian waters…

There, suffering always kept the tortured silent

Fearful of uttering a sound to drive sadists

Into ecstasy…

She prized a photograph of her son

In unsoiled Navy whites,

With his shoe tips on the verge of kicking

A tired old man who rick shawed him

Down narrow Asian alleys.

He was silent like all tortured prisoners

Who sense the whip can easily be exchanged for chains

While their privates can be wired into electric shock…

If her other fish took ill, She cursed the one they feasted on;

While she worried if her child was safe

At the far end of the world.

 

Ken Siegelman
Brooklyn Poet Laureate