Jim Burns
The Goldfish Speaks From Beyond The Grave
Twelve years swimming from
one side of that tank to the other,
bumping my nose against the glass,
turning around, flicking a fin,
and bumping it again. Christ, if they
only knew how boring it all was.
The same food dropped in each day,
the water changed once a week.
They couldn’t even let me live in
darkness, so insistent were they
about knowing what I was doing.
And when I was dying, and wanted to
lie at the bottom of the tank, they
rapped on the glass, and pushed
their squirming faces against it.
The horror is that there is no horror,
but there is certainly despair,
and I knew what that was all about.
Well, it’s finished at last,
and I’ve been buried in the garden.
A perfect end for an English fish,
helping to push up the weeds, so that
the family will have something else
to worry about each Sunday morning.
Page(s) 63
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The