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O Brilliant Kids
by Chris Bullard
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Excerpts
Two Fish, One Fish
As a hook for my son
to stay over
beyond the weekends
the court had ordered,
I offered to buy
an aquarium
stocked by him:
a peaceable kingdom
of glossy tropicals
to look after
as a family of fish.
He would be the father,
responsible,
benevolent,
providing them with food
and a clean environment.
Why was all he wanted
such stupid dreck:
a giant clam
and a sunken Spanish wreck?
You have your mother‘s taste,
I said. He cried,
puffing his cheeks like gills,
until we compromised
on a pirate chest with a diver
and two guppies,
who, he was sure,
would marry and have babies.
The rest of the lot
were my picks:
orange swordtails,
stately silver angelfish,
and a pair of tetras,
chunky and black,
who nipped
the whole school into heart attacks,
or suicidal leaps
onto the parquet.
My son spoke the final words
and flushed them away.
Two was a crowd.
The tetras slashed fins,
marking territory,
trying to do the other in
until only one,
Tetra Rex,
patrolled the tank,
rid, at last, of his ex.
Tiny in its anger,
I let it be.
In these cubic worlds,
we both accept that enemies
may crowd our lives:
those that appear
must be confronted.
Now, no one stays here,
just Diver Dan
on the tether
of his bubbling air hose,
who escapes his treasure
with nowhere to go.
Rising, falling,
in the clear water,
he recovers nothing.
At the Edge of the Parking Lot
When did the Mylar balloon
snag on the branches
of the Norway maple?
I’ve watched it for years
from my office window.
It’s only visible when the leaves drop.
The balloon is flat as a mirror.
Sunlight has bleached
the ribbon that holds it to the tree.
I never thought I’d be stuck
in this job for so long.
I thought I’d retire; go south.
Cars glide by like crows.
My close-cut hair
is as white as the balloon’s ribbon.
Purchase O Brilliant Kids here.
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