Penance: March 2, 2011 - The Fish

Prompt: Write a poem about a dead fish. Flesh it out with carefully chosen details.

Source: Writing Poems by Michelle Boisseau, Robert Wallace and Randall Mann

Response: The Fish

It was dead when they found it
ungloved hands clammy
with the sticky
black plastic
trash bag plastic stickiness.
It was just laying dead there
filmy eyes rusted over
with dead and stinky
rot of dead
things - dead fish stink.
They stopped dead when they saw it
mouths all open
with the just-
stopped-talking
jaw work but no talking.
It lay dead while they talked about it
touched it gingerly
with the squeamish
wriggling of girls
throwing it back squeamishly.
It floated in the water, dead, while they told me about it
they giggled
and squirmed
like half-dead fish
the story in retrospect making their skin squirm.