Guide to Making Fish Swim

I think the nature of things that live in water

should baffle and confuse and astonish you;

or at the very least you should feel moved

by the ways we water things swim; or don’t swim;

or sit in one place and sway. Consider:

how beads of water on glasses aren’t

what make your eyes larger but the mouths

of teeth swimming in the bowl. Consider:

were the bowl to grow, and the mouth in its pregnant belly

also grows, soon you would have a tank a tub a shark a whale

and what would you do with a tank and a whale

but bury the shark and sell the tub because clawfoot tubs

are so out of style and sharks can see too far ahead

and never look back. In my mind

you would be nervous to visit an aquarium. You

would look up and would not see your shark, your whale;

you would see my amoebas and stingrays and octopi

and you would say octopuses and I would say

drown and you would keep staring at my clownfish and make jokes

and I would have to force-laugh out of my mouth—but my turtles

would see the bubbles pouring from my lips as a signal

to charge so they would charge you; you

would scream—more bubbles—and my narwhals, which are not whales.

Unless they are—(they are whales)—my narwhals will spear you

and run you through and my black blotched porcupine fish

will already be versing your tush in deflation and I will call

my piranhas, whose service is self-explanatory. I have other less pokey fish

as well: my zebra fish do not make a sound as they gallop

through the tides of their tank beside the sea horse brigade, herd, throng

of squirming daddies with curled-up chambered nautilus underfoot

with their orange white colors like my mild-mannered cownose rays that glide

and do not maim but I need you to be maimed so do not expect my cow fish to moo

to you or to swim through your bubbles to give you a kiss

of fresh-fish air because they won’t, I won’t, I will just give you a guide

on how to swim and watch the ink bleed into the water, the paper breaking

and floating away, your hand grasping my openmouthed sea lamprey. Let go.

guide to making fish swim