The American Eel

“The American Eel” by Mark Spero is the second runner-up of the 2025 Queer Poetry Prize, selected by CAConrad. We’re honored to share this ruminative poem with you.

Born
in the only landless sea,
then a long journey,
all together, a bundle
of silver strings.
I am
scanning for safe
streams of egress.
I am stopped
by questions only
asked to nail
me down.
Where are you from?
Unctuous.
Are you the sex
you appear to be?
Glassy.
What organs do you
prefer in a partner?
What a waste.
Still, you can see them,
moon dust in Maine,
water singed by night light.
Each a beginning sliver,
a heartbeat necessity.
Then they grow large and old,
and that’s it, they
live forever, happily ever
after, with one small
hiccupped miracle:
they have no genitals.
I have so many
questions for you.
I want to slice
them from your
hum drum.
Are you or someone
you know looking
to consume my
finely wrought flesh?
What use is your
knowing me
if you merely
store it away
in your archives?
Eels are attached to
their mystery. For
centuries they let
us believe they emerge
from sea-foam, or
a certain kind of
dew. Still, so few
facts haven’t stopped
us from eating them,
slipping so many
down our gullets
that the rivers have
begun to return to
their dull blue.
If you blink,
I’ll have changed.
I am primarily
possibilities.
I am mostly
singing to the false
infinity of everything
I believe I can be.
When they decide,
they mate and die and
head home, that
ancient green sea.
But only when they know,
do those gonads grow,
and make the end possible.
Nothing at all
until they must be.
Only a slime self,
long and hungry,
contained, an
unbroken tube
of being.
I have been alone
for so long,
any and all social
situations come with
a deep thirst. I
have not withered,
I’ve grown into
coils of grey matter,
and I’d love
nothing more than
to show you, and
see yours too, but I want
to meet in a sea
between, where we
can breath in
each other, a
common, monotonous,
intimacy, the sweet
midnight fog. I
want this to
be necessary.