Fish

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.

for Philip Levine