Latin Names

It didn’t take long to find my coat.

I’d left it conspicuously by the door,

hanging from the slender snout of a piranha.

Or was it a barracuda?

Professor Shapko was a collector.

Professors who collect, generally invite

their students over for dinner en masse

on the eve of a final exam serving liver pâté

or sushi, leading them through rooms with bronze

statues, Brazilian masks and/or brightly painted

porcelain figurines smattered with craze.

Professors who pontificate, of which

there are many, often show in auditoriums

as well as domiciles, and Shapko was no

exception, displaying his wares, gutted

and enameled on every wall of every

room.  Hundreds of species.  For the good

of taxonomy.  We’d seen them in class, in

powerpoint, each bejeweled with its own

calligraphic moniker.  The European Sea

Bass, the Common Turbot, the North Atlantic

Swordfish (with its happy latin name, Xiphias gladius).

Some of us had viewed them more than once,

trophied in his split-level rambler in Danvers.

This was the accepted way to cram.  And what

better strategy to ace the final than watching

the ichthyophile pause in front of Dicentrarchus labrax

effortlessly connecting your neurons with a fish tale?

Or stepping onto a small ladder to view Pierpus

with a hand full of sticky caramel corn.

But there is something creepy about seeing so much

hanging fish, sideways.  Waxed and polished,

peering at you flattened and one-eyed-

something spooky as he slouches through  

besmirched halls, waxing taxonomic over tuna

and trout.  And something unmistakably frightful

to hear him intonate the same preamble before

each specimen: “And thisss little minnow…”

No, I found the door with ease, squeezing out

before the lemon blintzes and rubbery sponge

cake topped with Cool Whip.  Entering my dorm

room, I opened Saltwater Fish, threw my coat on a chair,

and noted the sleek, severed head of Sphyraena ensis

protruding through a sleeve.

Edward Nudelman has poems in Ampersand, Atlanta Review, MiPOesias, Ocho, Syntax, Plainsongs, Tears in the Fence, 4W, and others.  He is author of two books on an American artist. A graduate of the University of Washington , he lives near Boston with his wife and golden retriever.