Cᵤcᵤₘbₑᵣₛ
Sophie Knox Peters
I'm in the acme, Browsing, Y’know,
Heading towards milk and dairy,
And the fish heads
Start whispering about me,
I try to ignore at first,
But I noticed their icy lips kept twitching,
Whenever I turned my back on them,
It feels like highschool,
“What? What is it?” I demand,
The guy restocking the frozen meat section looks at me with concern,
I pointedly ignore him,
The fish are silent,
“No, really”- I say- “What?!”
One fish pipes up,
We were just saying how good you look today, like- we love your hair!
I respond: “C'mon I'm no idiot, what do you have to say to me?”
They are silent a moment, then a mackerel slowly speaks,
Well...we were just wondering... who is that guy you have with you?
“Who, my friend?”
Yes! They say,
I tell them
He is my friend,
My friend has gone to get chips and cucumbers,
“He is going to get cucumbers and snacks”
The fish eye one another,
Frozen still as they are they can still look about with ease,
Their eyes bright and fresh
“What?” I ask,
An employee, Restocking the Jiffy cornbread folds up an empty cardboard box and wanders to the back room with a nervous glance at me,
Look, we just wanted to show you this,
They start to flip and wiggle, hopping and slapping,
A big salmon half flops over,
A filet flaps and folds itself in two, to reveal
Underneath it,
There is a pussy,
On ice,
It looks young,
There is a little line of blood,
Seeping out from the lips,
We thought you might want to look at this,
the mackerel tells me,
“Yes”, I say,” I'm not surprised”,
Your friend brought us this last week,
And another one about a year ago,
“I know” I say, indignant,
“He does that sometimes”,
The fish stare back,
“It’ll be fine, he's getting snacks for me,
He’s kinda crazy about me actually”
The fish cannot shrug, but they would.
They roll back over,
Back to sleep on their hard bed of ice.
Peters works extensively as a visual artist and writer. She made her debut in the North East / Philadelphia writing scene a little over a year ago having previously made poetry and art in the swamps of New Orleans. She enjoys poetry that squirms, questions and jokes.
Creative written work by Peters has been published by Thirty West Publishing, Red Noise Collective and Naked Cat Lit. Her visual art (including the award-nominated text/multimedia ‘Aftermath') has been shown in the US, UK and Europe.