Fishing

By Kendall Turner

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We all want to hook the big ones: caught from rough waves,
twenty pounds of fins beating against taut, transparent lines.
We all want to go home and tell a tale: how we nearly
lost our lives catching dinner, how a monster lives beneath
the ocean’s surface, how the glint of its scales hide
in the sun’s reflected rays. Who knows if anyone believes us.
Who knows if that’s why we tell stories anyway.
One time you were reeling in a trout, a bucket of worms
wincing at your feet, and the silver fish flew out of the water
and smacked you in the face, its body flapping against your lips,
leaving the hook lodged inside your cheek.
Look, you said, look what the bastard fish did to me.
I pulled the hook out slowly, the tip catching on your skin,
leaving behind a double-pointed wound, a tail and a head,
as if you’d been kissed by some too-affectionate beast.

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Kendall Turner lives alone with cats in the almost-woods. Her writing has appeared or will appear in Femspec, Prism, Ms. Magazine, and other publications. A long time ago, she won a poetry award from Princeton University and also clerked and argued at the U.S. Supreme Court. She currently teaches with the Bard Prison Initiative.

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