by L. Acadia
Metaphysics of Goldfish∞ (Forbidding Mourning)
Only goldfish go to heaven.
…
Only goldfish go to heaven.
…
Only goldfish go to heaven.
…
Goldfish are the pure ones. Absolved of memory every three seconds*, baptized by the water they swim in. What would that be like, to swim in grace☙, to breath it in without trying or striving? To float in it, weightless?
The goldfish who awakes in its brief moment of knowing is like the sun “born over and over”; and, simultaneously, the material goldfish that persists across the stutter of selfhood is the continuity of the star hanging in space∞. The former cannot remember its death; the latter has no word to name it.☙
There are no villains in a goldfish bowl.
Could you nurse a grievance? Plot vengeance? Have desire?
Would you become brutal in your wanting, lacking patience, eschewing delayed gratification?☧ Would your unfulfilled wanting become an infinitely repeated note that would take on the quality of a drone? Or, would it bloom in you each moment like a revelation, the tracing of an absence by a single sonar pulse?
What poems would you write in three seconds? What ache or yearning could you trace with an urgency of keystrokes? Would your poem be a gasp of sequential recognition, repeated, like breathing?
The entirety and cumulative meaning of a goldfish poem can be perceived by gods but not by goldfish∞ who feel only the unreachable itch of ellipses☤ , this most innocent desire☨
A Goldfish Poem
I am
…
A Goldfish Poem
I am
…
A Goldfish Poem
I am
…
∞ “Goldfish” is both singular and plural.
*The three-second memory of goldfish is a myth.☧ They are known to have long-term memories that can persist over weeks and even months.
☧The myth is what we tell ourselves to feel better about keeping goldfish in a bowl. Their forgetting☙ is the condition of our self-forgiveness☨
☙Grace is an unearned act of clemency☨
☨Gods petition but the goldfish don’t look up☤
☤ “Goldfish do not write their poems for us.”
Anna Spence (she/her) is a Canadian academic by day and a writer by compulsion. Her work has appeared in several online literary journals, including Sledgehammer Lit, Emerge Literary Journal, and The Spotlong Review, and is forthcoming in the Bonemilk and SuicidalAliens anthologies from Gutslut Press and the Writing in Community vol 2 anthology from The London Writers’ Salon. She can be found on Twitter @MSSalieri.
L. Acadia is a lit professor at National Taiwan University, a dog pillow at home, and otherwise searching Taipei for ghosts and vegan treats. L. has a PhD from Berkeley and creative work published or forthcoming in Autostraddle, The Dodge, Lothlorian Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Neon Door, Subterranean Blue Poetry, and Typehouse Magazine. Twitter and Instagram: @acadialogue.