I see them from my bedroom,

pegged beside the neighbour’s

smog-coloured slips,

and on street corners

in the black thatch of power lines:

fish dried crisp, leaf-print bodies

honed to bone,

mined for eyes and eggs,

scales and fins mixed

in the gutter with other rubbish,

fish winched between drying ducks

round as spuds, rich with flesh,

bronze fish jangling above tourists,

causing arguments between neighbours,

taut in the wind, fish

big as tables, headless fish,

fish curved and smooth as boat hulls,

split and spread flat like sails

turning white in the white weather,

wearing a crest of frost.
Above me in the Former French Concession:

several small fish on the wire ravel

of a coathanger, cured

of saltiness, unscented as soap,

beside themselves in the wet market

rows and rows of brineless silence,

last night’s meal needled

with bones, on Jiashan Road

those that have dried their time are for sale,

the new twisting over footpaths

still tiled with scales,

eyes cataracted by cloud,

pious and quiet,

kids in a fish-trance

staring up into silver dizziness,

fish bones scattered like scratch marks

where cats get fed,

in the entrance to my apartment

two little fish

hang

in the window

like neighbours’ faces.