Goldfish Are Ordinary  

by Stacie Cassarino

5 April 09 http://www.poets.org/poemADay.phphttp://www.aqua-fish.net/imgs/articles/goldfish3.jpg

Goldfish Are Ordinary At the pet store on Court Street, I search for the perfect fish. The black moor, the blue damsel, cichlids and neons. Something to distract your sadness, something you don't need to love you back. Maybe a goldfish, the flaring tail, orange, red-capped, pearled body, the darting translucence? Goldfish are ordinary, the boy selling fish says to me. I turn back to the tank, all of this grace and brilliance, such simplicity the self could fail to see. In three months I'll leave this city.

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20648

Continued……

Today, a chill in the air, you're reading Beckett fifty blocks away, I'm looking at the orphaned bodies of fish, undulant and gold fervor. Do you want to see aggression? the boy asks, holding a purple beta fish to the light while dropping handfuls of minnows into the bowl. He says, I know you're a girl and all but sometimes it's good to see. Outside, in the rain, we love with our hands tied, while things tear away at us.

Goldfish Are Ordinary

http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20648

Stacie Cassarino

Source: www. br oads i dedpr es s . or g

She teaches at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and Middlebury College in Vermont. In the year 2005 she won the Discovery/The Nation prize.

National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media� to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic range and concern.

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National Poetry Month

Presentation by Neelima

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