For my father, in memory
In late August I come back
to the Sound for blues and fluke.
I wait with patience beneath
this copper sky; an oil slick
refracts the morning light.
I pull a fish, a good four pound
fluke, and catch my hand along the barb.
A three inch gash is bleeding
down my wrist; the salty flounder
burns into my skin.
His eyes are flat and glassy
in the air.
My vision too is going bad.
I try to stop the bleeding with a cloth
which turns, in a minute,
dark as fish liver.
I feel the scar along my head
you stitched when I was ten.
A father in the sweaty night
tying up his own son’s skin.
I lay an hour while you
tweezed and cut the black thread,
stitched, clipped, pulled
the cells tight.
A bass was swimming in me then,
a blue-black scaly thing
turning in the tangle of myself,
I hardly knew.
Now, I’m alone in this small boat,
a salty cut I try to bind
with a rag. It’s open like a fish mouth.
The fluke is drying on the floor,
I should throw it back.
There is an imprint
of scissored teeth
bound into my head,
your hands still swimming
in the skin
like fins that turn
and cut behind my eyes.
Leave a Reply