Judith Johnson Sherwin
SUSSEL ATTEMPTS THE SEDUCTION
/
OF HIS PLATE GLASS FISH
i am only a plate glass fish,
you seem to say.
how can i satisfy
you?
understand that i have singled you out from all other fish, those
with fins that comb the brine, those whose scales sport tiny
feathers, those with superbly droopy upper lips, those that lie
boiled and staring intelligently on my milk glass fish plates.
i am not a worthy object of affection,
you silently tell me.
desire
is essentially an unreflective structure.
but the fact that i have chosen you transforms you at once into
the only appropriate receptacle of my passion.
dear fish, you are more than a collector's item, more than the
mere object of antequarian zeal, more than a rhetorical device,
however ornamental. you are my challenge, my Galatea, my
antiself. Lilith herself could not flash her fishy loins at me more
brilliantly than you do in certain slants of light.
