The Girl and the Goldfish

Once upon a time there were three little goldfish,
Voyagers in a murky sea:
Desdemona, rightly, was the first to die,
Flushed down the toilet with scarcely a sigh;
But then Iago, forgetting his role,
Stepped out of turn and surrendered his soul;
That left Othello, bewildered and lonely,
Burbling fishy soliloquies
Through figures of eight.

She was telling herself the same old stories,
Alone in her head, with the same old stories,
Adding new details now and then,
Not wanting those stories to end.

“You wouldn’t even think of buying tomatoes now,
Not at this time of year,
Not in Poland,” she cried,
“I thought that was my home.
I thought he loved me.”

One summer’s day,
She stripped down to her underwear
And swam like a platypus
In the shining lake,
Quite drunk.


Winter came
And the Snow Queen
Rode her golden sleigh
Across the sky,
Wrapped in ermine
With jewels on her fingers.

She was chanting, dancing,
Whirling in the crowd,
Invincible Catherine Wheel,
Martyr to light and sound.

Some days she painted her fingernails.
Some days she did not.
The shade was always chocolate brown.
On her wall
Were a dozen museum tickets
Pinned up like butterflies.
On the dressing table,
Doubled in the mirror,
Lay a broken-backed Jane Eyre.

Othello swam on for a year or two,
Then he too vanished down the loo.