O Northern Snake Head

O Northern Snake Head of the Potomac

with your shiny teeth of pearl

these are fish that were

your eyes, nothing better to complain

to the fisherman, up from Asia,

dancing like a star

on the underground film circuit

befangled and friendless

bigger than a toaster, o you,

with the funny name on

land and sea, muddy, breathing

in the air, carnivorous with

delight and circling the

capital, these sad flowered

halls of produce, broken into

bits, unmanned and like a

submarine, sucking in the

shrubs, swamp thing, without

an even care.

**

Lisa Jarnot is the author of Some Other Kind of Mission, Ring of Fire, and Black Dog Songs. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches at Brooklyn College.

Archived at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/jarnotl_poems.htm