Fish tank head (ed)
Fish tank head (ed)
by Zachary Scott Hamilton
A bruised compression of oxygen clash that the windows serve in ounces to our countenance, shade again the willow and firmly the drill powered by an outlet inside of the bark – The sidestepping tuna in your awesome brain swims in its miniature glass tank placed onto your shoulders- it will wander through your life with you
Never-mind the hook of golden chairs served upon a plate of light / America or disturb the China’s shallow swamps with toes of pink electric and voltmeters of orange lace + ( , ) ( the thinning threads of tapestries ) loosened to the flower they become of the river –
Plunging into this, “a bruised compression of oxygen clash” may be “your awesome brain” under metabolic and sentient stress, “the windows” the eyes distributing their “ounces” of perception to the face (“countenance”) that we show to the world. [kind of like what’s going on here] “Countenance” could end the subject of the sentence, “shade” begin the predicate (the non-agreeing verb maybe being the point) overshadowing “the willow,” which casts a large one; but that’s what the mind in its “awesome” perceptions does, right? “Bark” seems to refer to the “willow,” so the willow may be our brain drilling its insights into outside objects by an “inside” “outlet”–funny. The brain is re-imaged as a “sidestepping tuna…in its miniature glass tank,” a fish too big for its container, to say the least. And awkwardly evasive.
On to the next. “Never-mind” is a critical segue between the brain (mind) and, I think, what it’s perceiving. “The hook” could be snagging our sentience with a lure of “golden chairs served upon a plate of light,” materialism that begins for Americans in America, is outsourced to “China’s shallow swamps” (?) and includes “orange lace” and “the thinning threads of tapestries” which empower the drill via our bodies’ “toes of pink electric.” A shocker, if they’re the ones in the “shallow swamps.” [I wonder if “( , )” should be ( – )]. But the materials “loosen” to become an impressionistic image, “the flower they become of the river,” which seems where the fish tank is “head (ed).”
So I guess the poem traces the brain overloaded by input from the outside being hooked by material objects at first and then flowing unmindfully, involuntarily, along an endless river of subjective impressions; which pretty much describes the poetic sensibility. How am I doing?