Shopping Poem by Morgan Michaels

'So that's what they look like', said Grace
dreamily, more to herself than to me,
when I found her in the seafood section
hooked over the gunwales of a bin, staring down
at topiaries of crushed ice-

'That's (still shivering from my trip to the cooler,
a gallon of milk for ballast in either hand)
'what What looks like'? , I demanded,
wanting to enter her dream-wanting
to take a role.

'Oh, bronzino', she replied, staring down
at the slice of ice cap, raked up, rolled out
and landscaped like a frozen dough:
heaped-up hills, dales and scraped-out troughs-
icy tides where swarmed

um, Them- bronzino (or bronzini, if that's the plural)
due, because there were lots
swimming the icy stream, mouths agape,
looking a bit surprised, as if never guessing
they'd end up here.

'Really'? , I said,
staring into the bin, which practically smoked,
to the school of chilly, pithed fish,
pink where not silver, silver where not pink,
and slit lenghwise.

Together, we studied the golden ring-
the iris, lovely, to ophthalmologists,
circling the dead-looking pupil,
sunken, but fresh enough. Sideways, we eyed
the glittering glaze

smeared on like collodian
sealing the flanks of each, ....