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Poem of the Week - ‘Fish Library’ by David Attwooll

by Yen-Yen Lu

Fish Library

Below the gleam of this paper and the sea
ceiling where light gains a purchase
like an anglepoise beam off green baize,
there’s a spiral staircase under the surface
down to the fish library. The flashing
core of the whirlpool shows the way.
Scales there are gritty pages; pulsing
gills open to pinkish endpapers.

Hushed, chained, the coral manuscripts waver,
curl, and shrivel. Shells divine the future:
texts become less various, rarer.
We learn to read the brackish
typography of seaweed and try to catalogue
lost fascicles, the volumes that are missing.

 

 

Quirky, unusual, and intellectual Fish Library by David Attwooll. Found in his first collection The Sound Ladder.

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