Bahrain Fish-Market: A Random Inventory Ocellated waspfish. Gulf dottyback. Black-eyed Trevally, red snapper, blue-tongue Jack: From where the loudest sound is a sprat Chomping bits off coral, they’re hauled up Into an afterworld of thuds and thwacks, Buried in air, instead of angels Scaleless four-finned monsters wielding cleavers, Gabbling prices across white-tiled flats. Such anomalousness once laid aside, A feast for the eyes as well as stomach! – Proving camouflage can be psychedelic The Picasso triggerfish, for instance; A lapis and yellow Anafiiz whose tints An old master might covet; Sultan Ibrahims Compared to which even a Matisse dims. That juggernaut of the shallows, the Dusky-brown droop-mouthed grouper Sports orange specks. Outglinting rainbows, The silver-sided turquoise-striped Sohal Like some light aircraft shows a logo Of brilliant ochre. ‘Broad crossbars, Transverse bands, blotches, borders...’ – A zoologist, listing them, turns poet- cum-art-critic. The spectrum’s stretched: ‘Ventral part of head and lips deep scarlet; along the body two series of jet-black dots plus a pale caudal peduncle; dental plate salmon-pink, the chin a lavender grey...’ As if Aladdin were, in fact, a diver, There’s no shortage in shapes here either: Bearded scorpionfish, blunt-nosed Pompano, A horned zebra sole, some spotted grunts; Species named after spade, cutlass, needle; A long-tail carpet shark of whose lethal Brainlessness an arms manufacturer Would feel proud; rays that come equipped With electric kidneys able to deliver A two hundred and twenty volt shock; Weird yet authentic double-ended pipefish; The poisonous puffer; big-eyed scad... These flounders are as flat as photocopies From before angles had been invented, Inks smudged, glimmers fading. Now add A sex-and-colour shifting parrotfish – Hermaphrodite champion of the oceanbed – And the most feverish surrealist seems prosaic; Epithets dangle like a severed net... Martin Bennett | Mudlark No. 12 Contents | Tropical Stopover