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.Thank you. I was rereading really, really old poems of mine and I used to write a shit ton of sonnets and villanelles. It's funny because by the time I had to write villanelles for creative writing classes I had decided I hated them. I kind of want to experiment with going back to form for a while, except - oh, I also don't, haha. I am pretty sure "III" was one of 2 or 3 poems in a set that were my first ever accepted for publication. To be honest, although it has its flaws, I am still pretty proud of it. If I am fair I think it sounds better read out loud than just laid out on the page - and if I am super honest I mean "when I read it out loud," specifically. I read it to a poetry group the fish-man and I were both part of once, someone told me after that if he (fish) wasn't interested after a poem like that, not only was he stupid, but they (the speaker) would gladly try and entertain me instead!
The love I have for my fish is a strange and different kind of love. I have indeed turned him down in the past because I did not think that what he was offering was what I wanted - and there have been other times I have tried to take that back. He is a very, very talented, passionate, and brilliant poet, and I am certain that his writing is a central reason for how I feel about him. I saw him 4th of July weekend and he told me, he thinks he is going to marry his girlfriend. This does not surprise me. It was clear to me the two of them had a different connection that he'd had with other women. I don't care about dating him. I just want him to always be in my life, at least a little bit. Occasionally we exchange poems. He was accepted at a prestigious MFA program with full funding and a TA, he starts this fall. I am very glad for him - and oh, so very envious. :)
You're lucky that he writes. Even if he was to be out of your life completely there's a part of him that he has to put out there and you can find it. If you exchange with him parts of yourself consistently then you're having deeper conversations than most ever will with him. Like in your poem physical interaction isn't enough anyway. His writing is the big draw and you still get that.
I went and dug this post up because I finally had a chance to look over some old poetry I wrote. I knew that there was a similar animal-person metaphor that I had grown attached to and it was a sparrow. That's all
So I'm a bit drunk and reading these right now, so perhaps that makes me more able to write this now that I usually would, but I love your poetry so much. It breaks convention of cadence but maintains it so well. It takes on conversational imagery but makes it so beautiful. I wait all the time to find more of your poems. I actually had a dream about you specifically for the first time the other day. We were laying in a huge... Box? A chest, more like? Outside in some amalgam of my work campus and your school campus that you saw as a creative space, and you were handing me poems you were writing at an incredible pace, about your loves, your fears, your home, your ideas of beauty. I'd actually forgotten about the dream until reading III just now. It's fascinating how dreams work like that. Anyway, I absolutely love your poetry.
Thank you for all of that. Dreams are funny. I like to make mine into poems of late. I am trying to write a set about dreams and sleep actually. So the coincidence is amusing. I'm drunk-ish, too! I am really happy with how well III has stood up to time if I am honest. I did a few edits and I think there's one or two structural flaws but in general you know what? I'm still very proud of the poem. I am collecting all my fish poems together too, to see if they can make a story. I finna text you an audio recording. :) I am touched and happy that you enjoy my poems this much. I am very glad you shared. Yay for drinks and drunks!
Hooray! I've been trying to focus my dreams into writing lately. I haven't been able to write a word in over two years, but for some reason, my dreams have all the ideas in them. Just need to... do it. Get the words to work with me. Please do send it! I'd love to hear it! Additionally, we're on IRC if you want to join us!