down the sink : rushed water

funnels after fish entrails, or grease gives

a type of collapse 

              inward, frying in a pan

fennel-seasoned. An equation equates 

oil and flowers, fields and division. Descent

is a disintegration by parts. What is missing?

I want to peer down at myself from above

and point out algae. How my grandfather

took me to the pond 

    for the gutting of it—

one blink’s worth too much. Why isn’t there 

more inside? Why isn’t there more to bleed, 

protrude, be stripped? All these still stalks

come from somewhere. Fennel was a field,

was a marathon, was a death in a field 

under clouds of phosphate.

  I slice a fish

sideways and grasp at the inside. Now

things go quickly, death is its own mass

and caves in time toward the event, and

viewed from without,

each second slows to a whisper

                      never to cross

over. Here. Here seem all horizons 

to end the same, bundled up in one ribbon 

tucked between the teeth and tongue.