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Larry Levis - FishLarry Levis - Fish
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The cop holds me up like a fish; he feels the huge bones surrounding my eyes, and he runs a thumb under them, lifting my eyelids as if they were envelopes filled with the night. Now he turns my head back and forth, gently, until I`m so tame and still I could be a tiny, plastic skull left on the dashboard of a junked car. By now he`s so sure of me he chews gum, and drops his flashlight to his side; he could be cleaning a trout       while the pines rise into the darkness,           though tonight trout   are freezing into bits of stars   under the ice. When he lets me go         I feel numb. I feel like     a fish burned by his touch, and turn and slip into the cold       night rippling with neons,       and the razor blades       of the poor,           and the torn mouths on posters.       Once, I thought even through this       I could go quietly as a star turning over and over       in the deep truce of its light.         Now, I must       go on repeating the last, filthy words on the lips     of this shunken head shining out of its death in the moon—     until trout surface         with their petrified, round eyes,             and the stars begin moving.
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