Inspired by a piece of ceramics by Claire Finlay
And Fish Might Fly
And Fish Might Fly
Did you use
a sharpening stone?
You must
have laid the fish flat -
but instead
of puncture wound at anus, cutting
through
paired pelvic fins, slicing
the thin abdominal
wall, incising
the ventral
surface along the horizontal until
you reached
jaw, spilling
guts and
blood and slime -
You hacked
clean through the centre
No delicate
flick of knife at dorsal fin
but
vertical cleavage through back-bone.
Nor did you
turn the spine of your knife
against the
grain of the scales, and flay until
you shed
silver.
So you have
it now -
without
entrails, with head
and tail
and scales intact-
A hybrid
thing
with a beak
like a bird
and a
butterfly tail-
Fish that
can fly
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