There is a man in my life who I have written about for many many years having loved him and pined after him from afar.
Over the course of time, somehow, he came to be represented in my poems as a fish. If you read a poem of mine and there is a fish, it is 98% definitely him. If the poem's about fish, it's really about him.
I am finally collecting all my years of fish poems and seeing what they come up to. I am talking I have written poems about this man for five years. Here are two of my earliest to share with you.
They are not perfect but they have meaning. They are rich with past. And cod oil, perhaps. They are my fish tails.
III
It doesn't matter much to me just what your skin
would feel like, underneath my palms, after
I unbutton your flannel. Mostly
we all feel the same. Your hair is just as fine
as anyone's to stroke and my thumb,
rubbing the tense muscles in your neck,
likes merely to inflict in you pleasure, make you
roll your head back like a cat. It doesn't matter much at all
if you think I'm pretty, most do. You're still
not convincing enough and I think it's time
we change the subject now, since just your breath
betrays you: caught for a moment on a wire fence that marks
the break between your haves and wants. A shudder
away from composure, it's clear what you desire. As for me?
It doesn't divide so well, break down to words and spaces,
or lack thereof. But I know I want to count your eyelashes
because you told me I would never have the time, and
hopscotch across your freckles with my nails. Or tell me -
who made you, who broke you, who threw your parts out back
behind the still, the sewer, the opium den? Who of the wild-
eyed graspers took you in, as much as
they took note of you, and didn't teach you one thing? What words
rise at night, despite the beers you swallow down,
the nightly drowning of your voice, and beg you speak? If that's
too much then just: who hit the beauty out of you, who
reformed your face? Maybe this is more personal than cock,
or come, but body never was enough for me.___________________________________
Sonnet #33
I tried to write so many songs about
your kiss, and how your breath would break into
my throat to leave me dry. About the doubt
I didn’t feel sometimes: before I knew
you’d only hold my hand around my friends.
I fixed my smile and paced in figure eights the night
six ticked to twelve while you lost thought. My hands
grew tired, tapping codes that never quite
could quiet fear. I tried to fit your laugh
in lines to make me smile and not forget
the parts I loved: your sly-fox voice and half-
bear-armed hugs, the mind that made me wet
with longing for a sense of right and wrong
as sure as yours. But this is not your song.