The Goldfish (edit 2)

[Truerenigma]

Hi tommoffing, another great piece from you. It looks like you've already got a lot of feedback but I'm going to just jump in anyway. I haven't read any of it yet so please excuse if anything is repeated. There won't be a whole lot of comments as I am pretty fond of most of it as is.

I watch him pitifully,
sometimes drifting
on eddies of his own
unknown making;
as flotsam jettisoned
from a child's voyage
of life and death discovery.

I think of life and death discovery could be replaced with an image that shows something about life and death in juxtaposition, or this specific journey.

Occasionally, he tail-flicks
into the perpetual pipeline
that recycles him, unaware
to the immutable aqueous present.

You want either of in the last line, or a comma after unaware.

Mostly, he stares reflective
out into the refracted, convex,
ever-expanding universe
through a dim ochre
upside-down
shadow of himself.

The shadow image is nice here.

Once, he was rolled
by my unwitting hand,
and blind-sided, exposed,
he flapped agape and tapering,
gasping at overwhelming clarity;

I like the form your going with here; I wonder if you have considered a single sentence for the whole poem?

But I scooped and saved him
by teacup drowning,
sieved, flipped and sluiced him
back into the cold clouded cyclical
inescapable bowl.

Semi-colon or dash after drowning.

Now he watches me,
mercilessly.

I'm not sure if mercilessly is the best word here.

I think it would be a good experiment during revision to try simplifying some of the grammar and avoid some of the listing and participles and run the whole thing on, using conjunctions and preps to give you a little rhythm at the start of each stanza, it would work quite well with the form you are using:

and occasionally . . .

but mostly . . .


Try it out and see what you think next time you are fiddling with it.

Thanks for posting.