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Column 668

Aquarium

Intro by Ted Kooser
01.07.2018

I’ve had a cou­ple of aquar­i­ums (or is the plur­al aquar­ia?), but I did­n’t take very good care of either one. The glass cloud­ed over with algae, and the fish had to live on what­ev­er they could scrounge because I’d for­get to feed them. Some liked eat­ing each oth­er. But here’s a poem (a son­net!) about an aquar­i­um you can actu­al­ly see into. The poet, Kim Addonizio, lives in Cal­i­for­nia, and her most recent book is Mor­tal Trash (W. W. Nor­ton, 2016).

Aquarium

The fish are drifting calmly in their tank
between the green reeds, lit by a white glow
that passes for the sun. Blindly, the blank
glass that holds them in displays their slow
progress from end to end, familiar rocks
set into the gravel, murmuring rows
of filters, a universe the flying fox
and glass cats, Congo tetras, bristle-nose
pleocostemus all take for granted. Yet
the platys, gold and red, persist in leaping
occasionally, as if they can't quite let
alone a possibility—of wings,
maybe, once they reach the air? They die
on the rug. We find them there, eyes open in surprise.
 

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Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©1994 by Kim Addonizio, “Aquarium,” from The Philosopher's Club, (BOA Editions, Ltd., 1994). Poem reprinted by permission of Kim Addonizio and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.

Column 669

Column 667