By the railway bridge, at the end of the mall

Brick and brown glass, next the billiard hall,

A shop mundane, most curious of all,

Whose wares, sentient jewels, to the idler silent call:

A hundred filters hum, bubbles foam and flow;

Walls and pillars, transparent, the air alight

With fluorescent cerulean glow;

Guppies and tetras, neon shards flicker bright,

A turtle squats atop a mossy rock,

Still and round as the shop-wall clock;

A goldfish for which your Moto Razr could hardly pay

And your Nissan Sentra would be a bargain trade—

An albino pearl-scaled ranchu, born out Mong Kok way,

Its tank-space rent with China White was paid,

For its forebears raised the feng shui

Of brothel and casino in distant gilded days

When Queen E ruled the colony

Free, rich and cosy in a giddy, gritty daze;

The whimsical collector’s quirky wish

Anthropophagic demon of Hmongic tribal lore,

A lurid, lurking catfish, from the Mekong’s muddy shore,

Gazes, unblinking, on you—a tasty dish.

At aisle ends, row on row, are stacked,

Tinned, boxed and vacuum-packed,

The flakes and crumbs and bugs to feed

Each aquatic race’s every need

And elixirs in Latin and in Greek,

If for physic aquarists seek;

For fin rot here’s a soothing balm,

And fungal plagues, that there will calm.

*

 “Min Jiang Aquaria Supplies” —

Forgettable name but memorable guise;

One of those islands mid suburbia’s ocean,

Hinting histories of which most passers have no notion.

It was better that way, for ‘Fatty’ Tsai,

The owner, that the City swirled on by,

For, of the tales that haunted that chrome-smooth head,

Not a few had ended in rains of blades and lead;

Mahjong debtors and hookers late on rent,

After the second warning of the Dai Lo had been sent,

‘Twas Fatty Tsai who came a knocking—

But his Tokarev did all the talking;

Agincourt and Markham remember but the sweet;

The music sighing parents sing, and each nostalgic treat;

The bitter is forgotten, the drama left to sleep,

The struggles now fodder for humour,

But there are those yet who’d recall the rumour,

 If a shrink could dig so deep,

Of tickets to Toronto, bought on a fearful hunch,

Lest Fatty take them out for a hungry grouper’s lunch.

*

Sometimes a snicker breaks the filters’ steady hum,

And plump fingers, anxious, upon the cash top drum;

And the fellow who takes the flowerhorn

At half its sticker cheap

Has a gaze and gait that subtly warn

One not to say a peep.

Outside the sun washes gold upon the green

Willows and maples, and houses strong and clean.

The home-bound traffic bustling, the school kids laughing by,

Through all, a spirit filters with a melancholic sigh;

It’s like catching fish with fists, but one can’t but try—

Though fearing a life spent chasing a lie—

To seize a moment’s conscious dream,

Groping through the murk for that half-glimpsed golden gleam.

*

© 2020 by M. G. Warenycia