Bluefin; barrel of salt; a barb hooked to its gape; mouthful
of krill swilled between cheeks,
pooled on the tongue; last feed.
Last of its shoal, which once
blitzed through tides; a force
of tanks, in their element,
each armoured with a skirt
of yellow darts; fins, drawn
to a point like arrowheads.
Silver keg, punctured, drained;
shy organs hauled from flesh,
swollen and scored, the rings of a fingerprint. Then sea,
the colour of tin; then sky.
Then the whole world tin.
Ella Duffy is a London-based poet. Her publication credits include The Rialto, The Poetry Salzburg Review and Pan MacMillan’s anthology Off the Shelf: A Celebration of Bookshops in Verse. She was a runner-up in The Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry (2018) and has been shortlisted for The Bridport Prize (2018) and The Aesthetica Creative Writing Award (2018).
