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This poem is taken from PN Review 281, Volume 51 Number 3, January - February 2025.

Three Poems Gail McConnell
Another Attempt at a Fish Poem

The snailfish hasn’t got a spiral home.
A body writing body, white on black
down in the hadal zone; more ghost than fish

the deepest-dwelling creature caught by lens.
Sensing no light, a scrivener of self,
it moves in flounces pinkish-wispy-white.

A shelllless being, as the lllls imply
the snailfish has its length – translucently
it flows; all flesh, gelatinous and slow.

How do I enter the poem or the zone
of impossible pressure and darkness
where a silence somehow caverns like death

(with your death – when you left in October)
while the creature slips out of the triplet
mucking up grief by still living?
...


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