J.P. Dancing Bear
Fish
Tale
A giant swordfish hooked off the Mexican coast jumped into the
fisherman's boat and stabbed the man through his abdomen...and
drifted for two days in his boat, unable to get up, until another
vessel rescued him.
--
Acapulco, Mexico (Reuters)
1.
I imagine how this looks
to anyone passing by--a swordfish
sliced through a captain and his boat.
It could make good barstool conversation--
background lyrics to another round of beer,
and the lurid fish-tale photo and laughter.
2.
Dreams come like death. My father and grandfather's
eyes were like comets, shaking their heads
at me, a failed fisherman not quite lost at sea.
Death by fish!--did we teach you nothing?
3.
The sun returns hard as a skillet.
Death's cloudy blue eye
is a moon that refuses to leave with darkness;
its body, a perverse provider of scaled shade.
4.
God is a fish.
The devil is a fish.
I have become a part of fish.
5.
I am a warning to fishermen:
Go back to your houses
and your wives.
Shake the shark teeth in your bottles.
Say a new prayer.
Learn to farm.
6.
God, the devil, and I are beginning to stink.
7.
I think the fish laughs
and as he does, his gigantic nose shimmies
into my body rings of hot pangs.
I think of the haunted--
how their ghosts come each night.
I feel like slipping into their world.
8.
The
fish says, Nice night for swim.
blinks his pale eye, Hell of a way to go, huh?
Do you mean me or you?
Me, of course. Why would I care about you?
I don't even know you.
He looks out the side of his face at me.
There was this sharpness in my throat,
it kept pulling at me,
the boat pitches and rolls,
it was really painful. No matter where I swam
the pain would not stop.
I tried many maneuvers--nothing worked.
So I jumped into the dry blue world.
Now look at me.
9.
What can be said to a fish?
10.
He talks all night, wants to know
if I know any of his friends.
He tells his stories about rockfish
that got away, a huge one the likes
no one will ever see.
A monster, I tell you.
11.
A rotting fish does not appreciate irony.
Bio:
JP Dancing Bear is a widely published poet, the editor-in-chief of The Disquieting Muses Review, and owner of Dream Horse Press.
