Feeling Sorry for Myself at the Shedd Aquarium, Chicago

Two big lobsters scuttle hard against each other, thorny and

heavy-mitted, until Dull-Blue

finally whips Greenish-Brown. Obscured in the baroque

curlicues of his own sad, sorry

silt, the loser flexes himself rapidly backwards. Rejected,

the octopus tints pink

with shame. Pouting, the clownfish drifts off, blotched

blue and cursed like me

with a permanent yellow smile. That’s how it goes, either

benthic or up here breathing

free oxygen: feckless, fuckless and a dime short.