"Anchovies" by Samantha Fortenberry

An Axolotl after George

I fell hard for George Michael.
He was still in the closet, or
hanging around public restrooms
and memorial parks.
I had him pinned to my wall.
I had him stuck to the bumper
of my Holden, where all those Jesus fish live.
I had an axolotl called George,
lonely in a tank of Lego
pirate ships and aquatic plants.
The tapwater made him white
and pebbled in warts.
It was nearly the saddest thing.
Once upon a time I had an MRI '
and it was actually the saddest thing –
flat in this tunnel with only
George lighting up the greymatter
and words like 'apple' and 'queen'
floating into the earplugs.
The tumour was benign and
the size of an anchovy.
When I named it George
the axolotl curled kidney-shape
and died. I played Wham! and
flushed it into a sewer which led
nowhere in particular.

---

ELIZABETH MORTON is a New Zealand writer. She has been published in Poetry NZ, PRISM international, Cordite, JAAM, Shot Glass Journal, Takahe Magazine, Blackmail Press, Meniscus, Flash Frontier, SmokeLong Quarterly, the Sunday Star Times, and is to be published in the upcoming Island Magazine, Literary Orphans and Paper Darts.

---

SAMANTHA FORTENBERRY is a photographer from a small town in Northern Alabama. She currently studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia. Ever since high school she's taken a passion to photography and photographs various subjects from surreal landscapes to fine art nudes and everything in between. Website: samanthafortenberry.com