The poem (love song, with two goldfish), written by Grace Chua is about the relationship of two goldfishes.

The relationship between the two goldfishes is similar to a young love story; a young boy falling in love and having a short relationship with a young girl. The poem has 5 stanzas each in parentheses (theme of confined space, isolation), and have a pattern of stanzas 1,3 and 5 having 6 lines and stanzas 2 and 4 having only 5 stanzas. (This represents the time period of each step of the relationship.) There is no particular rhyme scheme in the poem. Instead Chua uses humorous puns for goldfishes to capture the audience's attention and emotion. The title itself already gives a sense to the reader that the theme of this poem is going to be love, (love songs, ...) Love songs are usually used to express the feeling of attraction to someone, which is shown in the first stanza of this poem. The title is enclosed with parentheses which suggests that the two goldfish are in a confine area. The use of these parentheses is used to enhance the theme of the entrapment and the lack of freedom. the brackets symbolize the fish bowl, which the fish are imprisoned by. In the first stanza, the poem describes the male fish's attraction to a female fish. The male is always floating around her tells the reader that the two goldfishes live in the same fishbowl. The next line, has nowhere else to go suggests that they are confined in a small space. He is also always floating around her so it shows that the male is interested in her and wants to gain her attention. There seems to be a feeling of isolation, as it seems that they are at a distance even though they are in the same fish bowl. The boy is a drifter. By nature he ventures and explores and cannot stay in the same place for long. By contrast, he lives in a fishbowl and so he cannot do this. This leaves him with an existentialist outlook on life. In the second stanza there is a development in the relationship between the two goldfishes. The female fish starts to take notice of the male fish as she makes fish eyes and kissy lips at him. The author uses a sense of humour. Kissy lips can be described as the shape of goldfishes mouth. This proves that the relationship between the two fishes has progressed. The goldfishes are bounded by round walls which represents a fishbowl which suggests that the two goldfishes are trapped in their reality and do not have the power to change their lives which supports the next stanza. They are brought together by this common feeling of apathy and isolation. The third stanza shows the next process to the relationship as the male fish dreams of the future with the female fish. They dream of breaking out of their repetitive bleak lives and want to explore the outside world more. The male promises her that he would take her to the ocean. There is a contrast between a small confined fishbowl compared to the vast ocean. The parenthesis in this paragraph suggests that this dream can only be accomplished in their dreams because they are confined in such small space. There is use of alliteration in this stanza, submarine silence. The alliteration is used to emphasize that even though the fish want to be out in the vast ocean, they still want to be together in their fishbowl where they are in their confined space together, submarines are unseen and deep underwater. This suggests that the young couple want to discover more of the world. The tone of the poem (rhythm and meter) is not particularly fast or slow. It speeds up in the 2nd and 3rd stanza and slows back to its original pace by the 4th stanza. In this stanza, it describes how the female's attraction of the male, has gone belly-up, another pun used by the author. Usually when fishes die, they float upside down. This suggests that the female's interest in the male has died. The final stanza of this poem the separation of the parenthesis seem to be metaphorical. Both he and

She are separated by the parenthesis suggesting that they are no longer in each other's world. The reader will also notice that that the line a life beyond the is not in parenthesis. Having this line not in parenthesis is significant because the reader takes notice that the female desires something more than the male could give her. From the dreams the male had in stanza 3, the female realizes that he could not give her the freedom she wanted. The reader can connect this to the first stanza of the poem when the male had, nowhere else to go. Suggesting that the female left the male because she would be stuck in the fishbowl with him, and not getting a chance to experience the world. In the poem (love song, with two goldfish) shows the steps of a relationship between a young boy and a young girl through the use of goldfishes as metaphors.The feelings of isolation are something everybody goes through at that age and the desire to explore the world, as well as interest in each other. Although the couple seems to be happy at first, with their dreams, reality proves to them that they cannot achieve this dream causing the young girl to seek for a better life.