(Love Song, With Two Goldfish)

Chua’s poem “(love song, with two goldfish)” charts and dissects a heterosexual relationship that fails due to the female participant’s disappointment in her partner’s inability to change their circumstances. Chua divides the free verse poem into five stanzas. There are six lines in the first, third, and fifth stanzas, and the second and fourth stanzas consist of five lines each. The unevenness of line distribution suggests that two imbalanced perspectives are at play.

The poet uses parentheses throughout the poem to emphasize the sense of imbalance and division. A pair of parentheses resembles a bowl, and the words the poet places between the parentheses emphasizes the sense of separation between the two goldfish as well as the separation of the bowl from the rest of the world. The use of parentheses enhances the theme of isolation; the goldfish are isolated from the rest of the world, bound by the confines of their bowl, and eventually, they become isolated from each other.

Parentheses open and close each of the five stanzas of the poem. The first and third stanzas revolve around the experience of the male goldfish while the second and final stanza depict the female goldfish’s