Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Jaime 5!

{Daddy, Look at the Handfish!}
—for The Durge

With abracadabra tremolo,
fingers flutter at the surface.
Squareback anthia dart back and forth
in ticker neon, shy as the best-colored
gumball your quarter will never drop.
It has come for the damselfish
asleep now two days inside the coral.
Eaten to her petticoats,
the large thumb and forefinger
pluck the diaphanous remains from the
coral, lifting them slowly from the water
like death rattle from a theremin.

To the rest of the tank,
it is deus ex machina.
To the child the handfish
is magic.

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