AN INTERNET OF EELS

AN INTERNET OF EELS


today
on the internet

someone said
my hovercraft

is full of eels
in Yiddish

now my entire body is eels
they’re in my socks

and pockets
and stick out my zipper

on the post-pig
dissection wall at

the Sadie Hawkins Dance
I’m flying low

expecting a flood
in my brother’s Grade 7

wide-legs climbing
a stairway to

the interminable
seconds pass

my great-great grandfather
double clicks

the icon for
pogrom

a burst of birds
Hebrew vowels

poppy seeds
vo den? he says

what did you expect?
my great-great-grandma

pulls her arms from the flour
trundles into the garden

it’s all bungalows
here to Vilnius

c’mere she says
birthing

a thousand eels
just above the snow as

my great-great-grandfather explains that
the details of eel reproduction

are as yet unknown
and the discovery of their spawning area

in the Sargasso Sea
is one of the more famous

anecdotes in
the history of Ichthyology






________________________
a poem on my 49th birthday