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      May 12, 2022La Belle Époque of GoldfishTonya Lailey

      In the fish world many things are told by sound waves.
      —Rachel Carson

      On the radio I hear goldfish
      are out and about to take over
      waterways they’ve been making
      hay in stormwater ponds gone thick
      with themselves I listen to the story
      about the photographer who walked past
      a pond spread with marmalade
      and did a double take took a picture
      presumed the citrus light belonged
      to the water which it did though
      not only and the thing we keep missing
      that bodies touch bodies embody
      that there’s a whole free
      from the bowl the bag the fish get big
      67 oz. pop bottle big they make more
      of themselves—surprise!—Carlos K.
      Krinklebine on steroids on repeat 20,000
      in a slough the length of a football
      field water a slurry murk like turf
      and not a bad turn out for the game
      considering it assembled from a few
      forsaken souls that had been bobbing
      in a slosh of inches in plastic tied-off
      slight golden caudal lobes and fin
      rays fluttering as petals in a breeze harmless
      the furthest tissues from a threat
      now on the other side of the clear
      in numbers competing
      fierce for the wild for the 1000
      years lost to bowls to being decorative
      to living their littlest lives as jewels
      in the eyes of children, grown ups
      just as starved for a way out
      into the web of living waters.

      from Poets Respond

      Tonya Lailey

      “We seem to operate in wild switches between control and abandon, neglect. I keep coming back to our common sense of feeling unrelated to everything else, like we’ve forgotten our kinship with other lives. And, oh, the ravenous growth of the goldfish given the right opportunity, given an environment, given favourable environmental conditions. The goldfish seem to be having their day in the sun. I can’t help imagining a running list of creatures all having their own Belle Époques.”