Dale Champlin, Bronzino with Fish, Collage, 2021
Where Are the Boys
with today’s catch
of inky crayfish
snagged with borrowed rods
down at the borrow pit
what dreams both creatures
spinning in their boxed beds
how tangled the simplicity of lines
cast and reeled in
from various waters
seining with cupped hands
I dream possibility
dream of their dreams
remember then my brothers’
eagerness as they rode
in the green Chevy to Bull Creek
their joyful return
to Mother’s abrasive complaints
even though my dad scaled the bass
on newspaper’s pink sheets
pan fried them whole in cornmeal
served alongside
crispy thin potatoes
all the time mother shrieking
about bread and bones
in the room skeletons
dangling spines clattering
head to tail
his not coming
to go fishing again
lodging in our throats
like a loggerhead snapper
taking the bait
leaving us nothing.
_________________________
Pat Anthony
Review by Toti O’Brien
I like how loss here articulates in a jagged and ragged form, angular and zigzagging, folding over itself, moving slightly aside, then suddenly biting. I like how the relationship between human and fish isn’t a metaphor but an indefinable form of collusion. How the fish/us collusion makes the idea of loss/absence/memory/longing enter the body in a way that is more than ingestion—it “lodges in our throat,” a kind of indelible marking. How the body is harpooned by memory and loss. I am struck by the power of the ninth stanza, the chasm opened by the glimpse at dangling spines, head to tail, skeletons in the room—and we are suddenly made aware of how deep the water might be under the muddy surface.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
Family bonds and old stories unfold here in a simplicity of lines that takes us back and brings the past forward, leaving one possible daunting realizations lodging in our throats: between fished and fishers, the difference lies in the simplicity of lines.
What happened to our brothers? What is now of their past eagerness and joy? What of those comforting family recipes? In the room skeletons dangling.
Between cast and reeled, a simple question of perspective, of whichever side of the river surface we happen to swim.
Only the entanglement of our dreams is guaranteed as we see that what unites us is much greater than what divides us: dreams slipping from cupped hands, dreams spinning in a box, dreams taking the bait living us nothing.
Today’s catch is a poem that keeps on giving, whichever side you decide to travel it.