Boom boom, she says to no one

[busker]

“Boom boom, she says to no one”
—Patricia Smith

Sometimes I think about breathing and
then it’s hard to breathe.
A rubber stopper fills the hole
air travels down into my lungs which,
irritable by design, shrug
and close up shop. …. Is it just about breathing? No, thinks the reader. Expectations are raised.

If we had been born fish,
life would not be so dramatic.
This constant need to open up
one’s mouth and suck transparent juice
thirty thousand times a day perhaps
explains our other failings:

no goldfish ever cheated … the goldfish example is clever, but not sure where it goes in the end 
on his partner while off in Vancouver
on a business trip. At least, … reads like filler
not to our knowledge. And surely, no anemone
has ever missed a starring role because
they can’t pronounce her name. … seems just randomly thrown in. 

Yesterday I caught my mother
holding her breath in the kitchen.
She was propped against the sink, watching water
cartwheel down a porcelain serving dish.
From behind, her shoulders
looked like some enormous bird. … this entire strophe, and particularly this simile, is the high point of this poem 

When I called out, taking her
quite by surprise, the air shot out
her chest so fast the teacups
phalanxed on the drying rack … nice!!
shivered in their boots. Then she took a sip
of nitrogen and oxygen, opening her body
just enough to say my name.

I found the poem to be too open ended to like. Has the narrator become her mother, “seeing” herself? 
Was the goldfish the whole point of the poem?
Where does the first strophe fit into all this? It takes too many lines for mere context setting.

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And what exactly is going on?