BY S. D. DILLON
Copyright is held by the author.
Traverse City
Wanna see a dead fish?
One of the older kids beckons
to the break wall. Hung up
& bobbing in seagrasses
& debris
from Lake Michigan,
is a partially decayed fish. That is all.
We don’t scoop it out to examine it.
He doesn’t push me in.
We just stand and stare. After 30-plus years,
these memories intertwine
with Bishop’s great fish,
its flaps & hooks, thrown back in
to add another layer to the story. But this story
has no other layers, no beginning
or end. And our memories
wash up in waves
of dirty water,
debris & seagrass
& decayed fish.
Barcelona
The waiter hands me the plate
& snickers.
The fish are red
& whole. A slit
down the side
provides directions. Its dead
eyes point at me,
laughing too, as I fumble with utensils
to pick away scales
for bony shreds
of meat. What bothered me
wasn’t the fish heads,
nor the waiter’s sneer —
‘twas the meagre grey
shreds I forked out like surgery
& that empty feeling
in my American stomach.
Florida
The Atlantic was rocky that day.
Dad upchucked off the side.
I held on for dear life
to my mesh trucker hat,
its crusty old fish silkscreened
Whopperstopper lures Harvey Whopper.
We caught bluefish
& grouper & red snapper.
One of the older guys
caught a 75 pound amberjack.
Back at the condo,
on a shelf built into the boardwalk stairs,
Grandpa gutted the fish for dinner,
sluicing the slime of brine
& blood & scales off the wood
with the side of his hand,
hosing down the filets and organs.
I wadded paper towel, wet with turpentine
to wipe tar from my heel.
When I sliced the same heel on a sharp ocean rock,
or an embedded fish hook, I limped
to the same spot
& hosed away the blood
like I was fileting a fish.
Aruba
The murky dark shadow,
wider than my wingspan,
hovers in three calm feet.
Its deliberate
route traces the shore. Bathers jump out,
yell & point —
Is this a reflection, a shadow of clouds
that traverse the island
in those beating winds?
S.D. Dillon is a poet and small business owner from Michigan, with an MFA from Notre Dame. His poetry has appeared recently in Tampa Review, The Under Review, and Door = Jar, and is forthcoming in Wild Roof Journal, Gabby & Min’s Literary Review, The Wave, Half and One, and The Write Launch.
