Goldfish Are Ordinary

by Stacie Cassarino

At the pet store on Court Street,

I search for the perfect fish.

The lack moor, the blue damsel, cichlids and neons.

Something to distract your sadness,

something you don't need to love you back.

Maybe a goldfish, the flaring tail,

orange, red-capped, pearled body,

the darting translucence?

Goldfish are ordinary, the boy selling fish says to me.

I turn back to the tank,

all of this grace and brilliance,

such simplicity the self could fail to see.

In three months I'll leave this city.

Today, a chill in the air,

you're reading Beckett fifty blocks away,

I'm looking at the orphaned bodies of fish,

undulant and gold fervor.

Do you want to see aggression?

the boy asks, holding a purple beta fish to the light

while dropping handfuls of minnows into the bowl.

He says, I know you're a girl and all but sometimes it's good to see.

Outside, in the rain, we love with our hands tied,

while things tear away at us.

(http://www.poets.org)

     I'm usually not a big poem person because I'm not very good at understanding the symbolism,

but for some reason this poem stuck out to me.

It could be the whole goldfish part just because I always have thought it's cool to have a goldfish.

But I think that it is more the fact that something as small as a goldfish is the subject of a poem.  

I also like how the deeper meaning is embedded into the other lines.  It's unique.