It didn’t matter, didn’t mean anything. Too much
hair, he said, and flesh, and cigarettes. He was
drunk. She tasted bad. He thinks she faked it. Just
what had appeared to be your life lifted from your hands
and spilling, a little. You lay at the bottom, a still,
speeding place. Of the cold like a trout, of the silence
behind motion, you were less than the fish. But it waited
for you—honey-colored shed, new timing belt, a fly with eyes
like green fire—back in the air. You let go of the bottom where
dead things rolled and the light broke back into your lungs.
Interesting that this should come up right after I’d had a conversation about the concept of the fertile void. I liked reading this a lot, Nancy.
Simon, you do have a unique way of talking dirty, bro 😛
“Of the cold like a trout, of the silence / behind motion, you were less than the fish.”
Very nice. A pleasant undertone of D.H. Lawrence or William Carlos Williams without being the least bit derivative.
Wonderful poem! Flesh, Faked, Fish . . . fabulous.