A Display of Mackerel

A Display of Mackerel
by Mark Doty

They lie in parallel rows,
on ice, head to tail,
each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,
which divide the scales'
radiant sections

like seams of lead
in a Tiffany window.
Iridescent, watery

Prismatics; think abalone,
the wildly rainbowed
mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

Think sun on gasoline.
Splendor, and splendor,
and not a one in anyway

Distinguished from the other
-nothing about them
of individuality. Instead

They're all exact expressions
of the one soul,
each a perfect fulfillment

of heaven's template,
mackerel essence. As if,
after a lifetime arriving

At this enameing, the jewlers
made uncountable examples,
each as intricate

in its oily fabulation
as the one before.
Suppose we could iridesce

like these, and lose ourselves
entirely in the universe
of shimmer-would you want

to be yourself only,
unduplicatable doomed,
to be lost? They'd prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants
mulititudious. Even now
they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis
They don't care they're dead
and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,
they didn't care that they were living:
all, all for all,

the rainbowed school
and its acres of brilliant classrooms,
in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem
even on ice, to be together, selfless,
which is the price of gleaming

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry page 565

The assignment had been to find a poem that either had amazing language or a different triggering/actual subject within it. At first I was hoping to find a poem that would convey the second of the two for the simple reason that many poems have a triggering/actual subject within it. However, as I was glancing over the numerous poems within the book, I found one that immediately stuck out to me as having amazing language. I had never been able to see such a clear and beautiful picture thru reading a poem. Doty was able to create a poem which used amazing language so as to turn something as simple as a line of fish at a market into something with meaning and value. I love how he uses words like "wildly rainbowed," " oily fabulation," or "splendor." Doty is able to use language to create a surreal scene of fish on ice. His words flow magnificently well together creating such a beautiful poem.
I appreciate how he is able to create a beauty from all the fish as a whole rather than just focusing on one single fish. He constantly reminds us throughout the poem that it is the school as a whole that creates this wonderful image; "no verb is singular" as he puts it. It is like they are happy just to be together, to create a wonderful scene of shimmering, even though they are dead