I

Ten golden fish heads
Shimmered in the sun.
The shark fled
In blindness.

II

A jade fish head
Bled with the grass
It was a squish between my toes.

III

A town on the coast
By the name of Coast Town
Had black fish heads in the streets like a plague.
The mayor called it the “black plague of fish heads.”

IV

Waiter,
There’s a fish head in my soup
And its lips are as blue as my stomach green.

V

Lavinia found a fish head face in the sand
She picked it up but couldn’t see through the fog
Even when she held it close to her nose.
She saw with her fingers and
The grayish scales made her skin itch.

Later that evening, she had gray scales too.
Her boyfriend Charles packed and left Innsmouth
With her fish head face in his bag.

VI

The boy was at a parade
What a weird festival it was
With clangers and clingers,
People with pink fish heads.
The lights were loud and the music was bright
And soon enough in a passing mirror
He saw his own pink fish head.

The boy’s mother saw the news report the next morning.
Twelve cops had died in the shootout
And three hundred pink fish heads had drowned in a pile of slime.

VII

A bucket full of fish heads
With nowhere to go but home.
The sun is down and
The shark is hungry enough
To scavenge those whitened fish heads.