Fish


It is       in
us and     outside
us,  
a mad repetition of
how often we find ourselves the observers of
apparently impenetrable systems of
the hypothesis of killing fish

Perhaps we have never witnessed
a complete fish-killing
What we imagine more than once is merely the dismemberment of
a fresh corpse

Yet a fish's life does not end with
a sharp knife's disemboweling, but ceases with
a hammer, or even
a handy whetstone, internal bleeding triggered by
a violent blow

Those fatal yet unsharp things are like life itself
often more effective, one strike to
kill, to make it die without a sound
Returning home before the New Year, at the market, he steams with heat
his face curled beneath
a young hat, eyes closed as he scoops out
a fish
Hand rises, knife falls, precise, numb, I speak clumsily,
mimicking my mother's haggling manner, not far away,
a group of children is playing house, shadows awakened by sunlight
swim to my feet like
several leisurely fish that slipped through the net