ABSENT BODIES

Fish died like every other one, I 

think. Too ravenous, greedy, lost 

in between gaudy plastic 

plants and witnessed only by cheap 

Walmart stones (kaleidoscopic as they 

were); his silken fins torn hours 

later by the still running water 

filter. His floating body discovered 

by the babysitter: probably 

more buoyant than he’d ever 

been. I think, because I wasn’t 

there when he left. In 

the workshop I was in two summers ago, 

they told us we couldn’t write poetry 

about our dead, ‘cause 

death is just another cliché, and tidy 

rows of corpses have been dressed 

to their necks like turkey dinners 

since the first mourner grieved. There is 

nothing anything new you can say, 

as anyone new 

to grief. But I don’t know 

how to speak when I can’t 

remember. Is he still there, 

beside the water running from the 

roof, on the same chair? We are all 

reminding ourselves of the 

little things. a nail clipper. a song. 

My voice quenches under rain. Maybe 

it’s sacrilege to even say a word.