My poem “The Blobfish” has been published in The Cape Rock.

Here’s an excerpt below:

 

The Blobfish

Psychrolutes marcidus
was never meant for terrestrial fame.
4,000 feet below in his own environment
without a gaseous bladder or bones,
he hovers listlessly above the ocean floor,
almost inert, drawing his mouth open only
to seduce prey. He isn’t the javelin arched
dolphin or the serpentine eel, but he holds
the platonic form of a fish and
the crustaceans still know to beware.

Dredged up to the land from the depths,
his concentrated, yet gelatinous body
could not contain his expanding innards.
His once thin fishy frame bloated
beyond recognition and he assumed
the profile of the harangued everyman.

His mouth distended into a hapless frown,
bald pink skin sweating nervously
beneath the lamps in the laboratory,
beady little eyes dense with anxiety,
and that bulbous, flabby nose, probably
an organ squeezed through his brain,
lobotomized by the pressure shift.

I have met this fish many times before.
When I was ten, he lived in the aquarium
in my therapist’s office. He’d bloop his frown
against the glass repeatedly as I tried to
draw nightmares with waxy, Roseart crayons.

(full poem available at The Cape Rock)

 

Image Credit: “Campanian Fish Plate” Attributed to the Three Stripe Painter (South Italian (Campanian), active about 340 – 320 B.C.) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.