By: Paul Iasevoli
boy koi
My scales are coarse,
my fins bristly,
my touch indelicate,
but you love me for all that.
You wrap me in your smooth, amber fins
to forget what pampers you,
to loosen the soft shell that cradles you,
to be with me and stroke my rough, orange scales.
girl koi
Your orange and my yellow
are more than colors on a palette—
they’re the end of day before a thunderstorm,
they’re fires in John’s Apocalypse.
Come swim alongside
and rasp me with your lateral fins
to free me from this swirling eddy
away from the sameness of my days.
joyed koi
Night falls, and we enrapture fin to fin.
I below. You above.
Shuddering...
never heeding the flames of Revelation—
a burning blast breaks through black
and shifts light to terracotta
morphing into an afterglow
of peaceful calico.