By Jonathan Duckworth

Featured Art: by Giuseppe Barberi (1746-1809)

—for Kat Flinn

blurs become faces & eyes for me

as I see through layers of glass

& now that my fiancée is half

a continent away we speak through

a tunnel of light bound by twin

screens, more layers

& there are boats with bottoms

that let you see the underwater

in perfect safety & I wonder if the fish

in my fiancée’s tanks see us that way

huge ugly misshapen things safely

on the wrong side of the pane

lyretail mollies harlequin rasboras

bettas of swish & swirl green blue red

how they circle & gape & watch us

watch them & maybe sometimes

they wonder if we are happy & maybe

they see her on her couch as she

cradles my glowing face & they think

that’s how the finless frolic

& navigate this the sometimes

joy of being

---

Jonathan Duckworth received his MFA from Florida International University. His fiction, poetry, and nonfiction appears in Gulf Coast, Bayou, Barrelhouse, Tupelo Quarterly, Superstition Review, and elsewhere, and his chapbook Book of Never was published by Finishing Line Press. Duckworth has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. He is a Ph.D. student at University of North Texas.

Originally published in NOR 28.