A group of fish swims beneath the grate: yellow and gray-white and red.  They are caged, I am told, so that the cranes 
will not land and steal them for their meal.  A handful of white cranes sway in the picnic area pond, oblivious to the 
bread crusts floating around their legs, spongy and distended, flung by underdeveloped children hoping to tempt the 
birds into eating.  The fish look at me with their black spotted eyes, crowding to the surface, mouths forming an 
expectant "o" over and over again.  Stimulus and expectation, hunger and fulfillment, premise and conclusion, a chain
of reasoning grounded in repetition: countless discrete individuals piteously feeding the caged, suckling fish, paternal 
benevolence in the swish of a hand.

Mouths continue chanting rhythmically.  These are greedy fish.  I want to crouch down and reach my fingers through 
the lattices of the wire, grabbing hold of one around its fat belly.  I will hold it with both hands as it squirms against 
the dryness of the world I have brought it into, the slime and ammonia from its scales threading through my fingertips.

Noticing that I am still here, the man who knows about the cranes approaches.  His pants stretch and billow out at the
knees where he has been leaning all day cleaning out aquatic tanks, the smell of stale water and algae soaked into his 
forearms.  Sweat mats his t-shirt to his back and causes the clumps of gray hair rooting at his temples to jut out 
perpendicularly from his forehead and bob as he walks.  He reaches into his pocket and removes a quarter, extending
it towards me.  He smiles and asks if I too would like to feed the fish, flopping his wrist towards a heavy bubblegum 
machine welded into the ground at the foot of the bridge.  Grainy paint flecks cling to his stubble, haloing around his 
face.  His clothing is covered with larger dots of paint.  He nods and pushes the quarter and his palm towards me again.
He is friendly and generally a good soul who loves his family and has found something to enjoy in his work.  I decide 
not to like him.  I take the quarter and deposit it into the machine.  The handle turns with a crack-clack and salty, brown 
pellets pour into my hand.  They leave a gritty residue on my palm.  I close my fingers around the pellets, but the sweat 
in my skin activates the smell, sawdust and rotting fish burning its way into my nostrils.  I am suddenly reminded of fattened
cows gorging on the processed remains of the herd and wonder if these fish too are cannibalizing on their brothers.  I 
lean my hand over the railing and the pellets flake away into the waiting mouths of the fish.

There are tanks and tanks of tropical and freshwater fish here at the aquarium and a number of outdoor displays, but 
no salmon.  I know because I have asked.  Inside, I stared and stared at the jellyfish: viscous, translucent globules 
stretching and glowing and reaching out with their umbilical arms.  My face pressed against the convex belly of the 
glass, children huddled around my legs, scratching themselves against my skirt, levering themselves around the 
observational tanks for a better view: rubbery faces contorting with amazement and disgust, leaving prints on the
glass from damp fingers and mouths.  And the half-formed jellyfish floating in the uterine darkness of the water, 
oblivious to their audience.

Outside, the sun shines brightly, but my eyes register only the fluorescents of ceiling lighting and the cool breeze 
is haled away by medical smells: latex and talcum powder.  I was told: I am healed; the procedure a success, the 
barnacle scraped away.  Nearby, the man with the cranes and the quarter is explaining the origins and derivations 
of scientific fish naming: Aequidens Rivulatus, Poecilia Reticulata, Capoeta Oligolepis, Capoeta Titteya, Carassius
Auratus--barbs, guppies, and goldfish no longer.  An extended lecture on naming variations linking and separating
genera, species, family.  Prefixes a heteroglossia of Latin and Greek.  Suffixes laid out with Latin regularity: "atus,"
"atum," "epis."  Names branch and blend amongst familial relations like characteristics.  My name will not carry on. 
I have made sure of that.

Under the bridge, the fish continue to flap away in the pond.

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Copyright © 2005 by Calaveras Station and the CSUS English Department.