Molly Fuller: Metamorphosis

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Metamorphosis

Fish without memory / fish with memory

water flows over / oxygen is extracted

branchial arch, visceral arch, gill arch

cartilaginous (vertebrate animal)

transitory we understand

we are becoming / we are something other

mandible, hyoid bone, larynx

lamellae / capillarity

gives way to periodic breathing                                

out of the womb

like a fish on dry land                                                

anadramous / what do they remember?

flocculation (creaming / sedimentation)

permeability / amniotic

subsidence (tendency of a liquid)

(surface tension)

too often we forget                                                    

there is no scale for our memories                            

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Molly Fuller is the author of the full-length collection For Girls Forged by Lightning: Prose & Other Poems (All Nations Press) and two chapbooks Tender the Body (Spare Change Press) and The Neighborhood Psycho Dreams of Love (Cutty Wren Press). Her work has appeared in Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence, New Poetry from the Midwest, 100 Word Story, Kestrel, NANO Fiction, and Pedestal Magazine. She is the recipient of a 2020 Artist Residency from both Vermont Studio Center and Wassaic Project. You can find her on Instagram and twitter @mollyfulleryeah.