The narrator visits a pet store searching for a fish to distract from sadness but not require love back. The store clerk says goldfish are ordinary, but the narrator sees their grace and brilliance in the tank. In three months, the narrator will leave the city. The clerk offers to show fish aggression by dropping minnows in a beta fish's bowl, saying "it's good to see" sometimes, though the narrator is a girl. Outside in the rain, love is tied up while things tear away.

1. Goldfish Are Ordinary
by Stacie Cassarino
5 April 09 http://www.poets.org/poemADay.php
http://www.aqua-fish.net/imgs/articles/goldfish3.jpg

2. Goldfish Are Ordinary
At the pet store on Court Street, I search for the perfect
fish. The black moor, the blue damsel, cichlids and neons.
Something to distract your sadness, something you don't need
to love you back. Maybe a goldfish, the flaring tail, orange,
red-capped, pearled body, the darting translucence? Goldfish
are ordinary, the boy selling fish says to me. I turn back to
the tank, all of this grace and brilliance, such simplicity the
self could fail to see. In three months I'll leave this city.
Continued……

3. Goldfish Are Ordinary
Today, a chill in the air, you're reading Beckett fifty blocks
away, I'm looking at the orphaned bodies of fish, undulant and
gold fervor. Do you want to see aggression? the boy asks,
holding a purple beta fish to the light while dropping handfuls of
minnows into the bowl. He says, I know you're a girl and all but
sometimes it's good to see. Outside, in the rain, we love with our
hands tied, while things tear away at us.
http://poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20648

4. Stacie Cassarino
She teaches at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and
Middlebury College in Vermont. In the year
2005 she won the Discovery/The Nation prize.
Source: www. br oads i dedpr es s . or g

5. National Poetry Month
National Poetry Month is a month-long, national celebration of
poetry established by the Academy of American Poets. The
concept is to widen the attention of individuals and the media
— to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our complex poetic
heritage, and to poetry books and journals of wide aesthetic
range and concern.
http://poets.org/page.php/prmID/47

6. Presentation by Neelima
http://www.slideshare.net/Neelima.A