Five Fishes Journal

Our eighth bucket — and what a pleasure it is. Welcome to February, folks! In this bucket we have a good handful of work about fishing, which I can almost never resist. Hope you enjoy reading these as much as I did. And, as always, refer to our submission guidelines if you’d like to send in your own work.

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Feathers

by Kay Middleton

No longer the feather she used to be
her breath still sings a song in fretful air
a song like wings beating summers searing

a memory song in weighty boots
in the wet snow of winters’ waste

a song too early for the pale tips of spring
or moist brown earth or pink sunsets

a song preceding mating melodies
her desire to rise early or to try to love again

it becomes a chorus of excuses, stamps
in faded colors from distant places
repetitive refrains of rain, sleet and tears
a song like that of the mourning dove

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The Man From Emplar Village

by Rae Spencer

A man of Emplar Village
discovered life’s true worth
in the form of an evening shadow
which crept across his words.

The exact nature of his insight
retreated into dreams,
so that he could never, while awake,
realize himself.

He lapsed into dementia
and refused to leave his sheets.

Stunned family watched him slumber,
whispered among themselves.
They remembered lineal madnesses
and diseases worse than death.

Some dawns when he awakened
he struggled with new tongues,
which lost meaning in his lungs
or lodged between his teeth.

At last his body dwindled,
disappeared into the wilds,
where twigs and antlers traced
a map, like veins beneath his skin.

Where vision coalesced with voice,
when he was far from home and kin.
Six birds and fourteen bullfrogs paused,
to hear the wondrous fate of men

described, pronounced as wondrous tones
in their empty, speechless throats.

And their echoes pealed like thunder,
flowed down with crystal streams
to the fertile vale where family mourned
beside a delta clogged with silt.

Wisdom stained the riverbed,
fed its sluggish horde,
broke free with dragonflies,
and settled on the banks.

Children dipped bare, cautious toes
in currents thick with promise,
tasted mortality in their gasps
and ignored the dragonflies.

For twelve long years of sun and moon
the bewildered man raved on,
a senseless, ranting oracle
for a prophetless age.

And when he stopped,
silence fell into the quaking mountain.
Snowmelt seized his final plea.
Tides, what he claimed of destiny.

And the man went home to Emplar Village,
leaving his shadow behind.

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Skunked

by Mike Berger

Aghast; steep prices stole my breath:
a fishing rod for 200 bucks. A reel,
line and lures were another hundred;
not to mention a fishing cap and
rubber waders.

I announced with some dramatic flair,
I was going fishing. My wife was taken
back; I had never gone fishing before.
The local stream glistened in the morning
sun. I was alone on the stream with my
fantasies of landing a big one.

By noon, I didn’t have so much as a bite,
so I moved upstream. There I was joined
by a young boy; he sat on a rickety
bridge. His pole was a bamboo stick
with five yards of line tied to it. Next
to him was a battered can of worms.
He waved as he started to drown those
worms.

I tried every lure in my new tackle box;
nothing! As the sun went down, I finally
gave up. I look to that little lad; he hadn’t
caught anything either.

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The Breathless Fish

by R Jay Slais

she is a fish
with sea shaped gills

throughout the night
I pour water on her

my tongue can decipher
waterfall linguistics

an electric factory
with ample juice

to finally eviscerate
the reservoir inside

she swallows the sea
when she drowns

call of tidal moon
pucker of quivered lips

saturated she wriggles
breathless on her bed

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Fishing

by Kristy Athens

Before turning on the furnace, Dustin checked for spiders or dead mice. While he had put off re-commissioning it as long as possible, by mid-October the northern nights were hovering right around freezing. The single-paned windows of this cabin were durable but did a poor job of keeping heat in. While the furnace was inefficient and noisy, it did still work (or had in May).

All summer Dustin listened for the crunch of gravel, an end to his stay. He had deduced in spring, when he came upon this cabin after getting dropped off in Ely by a long-haul trucker and walking five miles before giving up on another ride, turning in toward a lake, and discovering it, that the cabin was a vacation getaway for some family down in the Cities. While he fished the lake for trout; while he dozed on the front porch; while he cut his hair with the boning knife he’d found in a drawer, Dustin expected the owners at any moment.

When his presumption failed, Dustin made up fictions about them. The father worked all week and fished every weekend, but never caught anything—a depressing way of minding his own business. His wife had taken up with her teenage daughter’s best friend’s older brother, and her daughter knew about it. She and her sister considered their father simply a wallet; they didn’t realize that he planned to cut them off as soon as they turned 21.

Dustin sliced into another trout.

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The Crafters

Kay Middleton lives on the edge of the sprawling Lake Smith in Virginia Beach where she writes novels and poetry, the long and short of it. She reads fervently, changing chairs frequently but never naps. Publishing credits include Vox Poetica, Concise Delights, Eat A Peach and others. You can read more at her website kaymiddleton.net.

Rae Spencer is a writer and veterinarian living in Virginia. Her poetry has been published in The Healing Muse, vox poetica, Emprise Review, Autumn Sky Poetry, Triggerfish Critical Review, Temenos, and elsewhere.

Some of R Jay Slais’ recent publications include poems at Barnwood Poetry Magazine, Boston Literary Magazine, MiPOesias, Oranges & Sardines, The Pedestal Magazine, and Rose & Thorn Journal. His first collection of poetry, Mice Verses Man released January 2010 from Big Table Publishing. A single father raising his two kids, he writes from his home in Romeo, Michigan and makes a living as an engineer/inventor for a Metro Detroit automotive industry supplier.

Kristy Athens’s nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers and literary journals, most recently High Desert Journal, Eclectic Flash, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. Her text-infused, repurposed collage greeting cards appear in 1,000 Ideas for Creative Reuse and are available at http://ithaka.etsy.com.