The Importance of Goldfish
Michael McClintock

In our eyes and our sleep and our answers to everything and the way we ate our food and left our personal odors and debris around the house, like strands or clippings of hair, or a fingernail, or wadded tissue with spit, and seldom coordinated our clothes or speech or opinions when we went out or had people over, preferring different books by different authors about different things, and the feelings we kept to ourselves, harboring them like warts or bleeding punctures, until now, we grew apart and we knew it, had known it for over four years---since the day you lost the gold fish down the toilet and never said you were sorry. You even laughed about it.

"only temporary" ---
about our separation
we agree to lie

Michael McClintock was educated at Occidental College and the University of Southern California, specializing in English and American Literature, Asian Studies, and Information Sciences. He served as Assistant Editor of Haiku Highlights in late '60s; Associate Editor of Modern Haiku in early '70s; edited Seer Ox: American Senryu Magazine, and the American Haiku Poets Series, 1972-1976. He currently is tanka editor for Simply Haiku, writes the "Tanka Cafe" column for the Tanka Society of America Newsletter, and edits "The New American Imagist" series for Hermitage West. 
Collections of haiku, senryu, tanka, and related poetry include "Light Run" (Shiloh, 1971), "Man With No Face" (Shelters Press, 1974), "Maya: Selected Poems" (Seer Ox, 1976). His work has been broadly anthologized, including in each of the three editions of The Haiku Anthology, edited by Cor van den Heuvel(1974, 1986, 1999). "The Tanka Anthology," edited by Michael McClintock, Pamela Miller Ness, and Jim Kacian, Red Moon Press, 2003.