Five Fishes Journal

An Ordinary Flea Market In Hannibal Missouri

by Melanie Browne

with Lemon Meringue pies
just look at the peaks,
so stiff and brown!

an ordinary Flea Market
on an ordinary day
in Hannibal Missouri

funnel cakes and beer
dalmation puppies,
doilies, doilies, doilies,
antique photographs,

candy corn and ashtrays,
pillows with mottos,
muzzle loaders,

just an ordinary Flea Market
in Hannibal Missouri

- – - – -

Reflection

by Cindy Hayes

The pristine watercolor lake
I waded in as a child
Laid out before me
Like an ice skating rink
Frozen fringed with silver
A swimming competition
With black and white flags
First romantic pink-lipped kiss
In a red rowboat
That almost fell over
Walking hand in hand
With you on the emerald shore
Our white wedding on the pier as
The doves cooed and the
Fish flipped underneath
Our babies’ first baths
Wrapped in hooded ivory velour
Towels silly children splashing
And giggling in the summer
Heat hungry lime green frogs
perched on water lilies yellow
Black forever storm hugs
In the middle of the night
Gold lightening strikes
And gold anniversary rings
The blue moon sitting on the
Horizon- just like me

- – - – -

Dragonfly

by Cindy Hayes

You were a giant of your kind
With an enormous iridescent body
That flew enchanted by the light’s radiant
Brightness, like a gypsy dancing
Wildly around a campfire.
Performing acrobatic moves
You knew I was watching you
With your mammoth stained glass wings
That ensured your flight unlike
Icarus attracted to the glowing sun.
And I began romancing you
Oh, descendant of ancient ones.
Crafted by intelligent design
Like my grandmother’s Sunday brooch.
I spoke softly, as you drew near
You seemed mesmerized,
As if you were trying to hear me.
I crooned to you as your wings hummed.
I held my breath and you danced.

- – - – -

Waiting For The Freeze

by Kenneth P. Gurney

We both live with
the decayed smell
of the Acheron
drifting by the house,
by the wharf
where the canoe
rests without a paddle,
where the dead fish
float, belly up,
toward the sea.

- – - – -

Bite

by Joshua Mostafa

The girl with the black eyes was walking through the bush, barefoot as usual, because she loved the feel of the soft earth between her toes, when she was bitten by a snake.

The trees became impossibly tall around her, and she felt herself sinking onto the ground and then beneath its surface. Unable to turn her head, she watched the leaves darkening and blurring. She was lucky that a young man happened to pass by on the trail; if he had not seen her then, lying wide-eyed and vacant, she surely would have died there under the moon. He saw the snake slithering away and used a rock to kill it. He was disturbed to see, as it ceased thrashing, a glint of triumph in its eye.

For three days at the hospital the girl was asleep, and the young man came back several times a day, whenever his work could spare him; he was head chef at a busy restaurant. Slowly she revived. But she did not speak a word, not even to tell her name, although she was alert, and she smiled when the young man told her how he had found her lying under the tree with two sharp marks on her ankle and a peaceful smile on her face, and how her hair had smelt of pomegranates as he carried her to safety. When she was offered food, she could not eat it. No matter what she was offered, it tasted of ashes and mould. The doctors were afraid that if she did not eat soon, she would starve.

The young man was frantic. Sitting at her bedside he had become fond of the girl, for her quiet grace as much as for her beauty. There were pretty waitresses at his work, but he had no time for them: their chatter filled the air and made it hard for him to concentrate on thinking up new cuisine to delight the customers.

—Surely, he said, there must be something she can eat.

The doctors tried to put a tube into her arm so that she could be fed without eating; but her skin, which was as soft as a child’s, turned hard at the touch of the needle and broke off its point, no matter how many times they tried.

—If anyone can make her food she will enjoy, the young man cried, I will do it. He took her in a wheelchair to the restaurant where he worked, where the waitresses fussed over her while he set to work in the kitchen.

The young man was famous for his ability to conjure up food to suit any taste. Princes and ambassadors would come to his restaurant every time they visited the city. Young children with a healthy appetite would taste his food once and become finicky and demanding eaters who would drive the parents mad. Now his talent was to be put to a higher purpose. On the spot he devised his most elaborate degustation yet, a fusion menu drawing from all over the world. He shouted orders at his assistants, sending them scurrying about to fetch the most esoteric ingredients.

The first course was brought to the table of the girl with the black eyes: emperor prawns tossed in the oil from a rare nut that grows only on the volcanic islands of Ofu-Olosega, doused in spirits distilled by Alpine monks, and set on fire just before serving, sealing the flavours inside.

Under the watchful eyes of the waiter, the girl tried a bite. She hoped desperately that she would be able to eat it. A kind of calm had settled over her since she had been bitten, and she was not afraid to die; but she was so hungry, and she wanted to bring a smile to the face of the kind young man. But it tasted of charcoal and dirty rainwater. She could not hold it in her mouth, and had to spit it back on to the plate.

The chef was disappointed, but he knew that she would be unable to resist the next dish: lightly chilled fruit, the colour of snow, recently discovered in Antarctica, so delicious that half the expedition had lost their minds and burrowed into the snow to find more, where they would have died of exposure and gastronomic ecstasy, had their fellows not dragged them out. He had personally carved it into the shape of a tiger lily and used the essence of flowers from the Amazonian rain forest to give each petal a different colour. The aroma of the dish made the waiter struggle not to eat it himself as he brought it out.

To the girl, it smelt so badly of rotten peaches that she could barely bring it to her mouth: when it touched her tongue, she retched and had to turn her head away.

Undeterred, the young man and his assistants worked harder, each course surpassing the one before. Slivers of venison, infused with white truffles from Alba and simmered in hot crocodile tears. The breast of a phoenix, laced with saffron and grilled over mahogany embers. An ice cream so light it was almost like candy-floss, in which each mouthful had a different flavour, a sensual index to a hundred different fruit, drizzled with the honey of African killer bees. Each dish was an audacious piece of culinary art that would have won over the most fastidious diner. But to the girl, they tasted only of decay and of ashes. With tears in her eyes she shook her head and sent each waiter back down to the kitchen with the food uneaten.

The young man was distressed. He had put his all into the menu and did not know what else to try. In frustration he threw his best wok across the kitchen where it hit the wall, and its handle broke off. Then he came up to the floor of the restaurant.

—Come with me, he said, and see if you can see anything you like in our larders.

The girl with the black eyes followed him down to the kitchen. He gave her a tour, showing her great jars of Oriental spices, a refrigerator filled only with the finest cheeses from around the world, plump rabbits roasting on the spit. But nothing seemed good to her.

Suddenly in the corner, beside a bread-oven, she saw a movement. Quick as a trap she swooped, without stretching out her arms to steady herself, and seized a brown rat between her teeth.

Under the stare of the young man and his assistants, the girl with the black eyes crunched through the rat’s skull with a single bite. The fresh sinews and velvet-soft fur was the most succulent thing she had ever tasted. She swallowed the carcass whole, fall without using her hands. She slowly stood up, licked the blood from her lips, and turned to the young man with a glint of triumph in her eyes.

*

A year later the young man still worked in the restaurant, producing the most succulent dishes that could be had in the city. The girl with the black eyes had moved in with him to the flat above the restaurant. She had begun to speak again, if only in a sibilant whisper. They were happy. And the kitchen was always completely free of rats.

The Crafters

Cindy Hayes is a non-traditional student and a senior at Elizabeth City State University in Northeast North Carolina.  Many of her poems are inspired by treks into great outdoors.  She adores just taking in the sights and sounds of nature.

Kenneth P. Gurney lives in Albuquerque, NM, USA.  His work appears mostly on the web as he spends SASE and reading fee dollars on flowers for his lover.  To learn more about Kenneth, visit http://www.kpgurney.me/Poet/Welcome.html

Joshua Mostafa, as his name suggests, is a thoroughly mixed-up individual: mixed race, juggling passports and visas, fidgeting here and there across both Atlantic and Pacific. At the moment he lives in Australia, and is travelling through Europe researching the late Neolithic; but by the time you read this, all that has probably changed. He writes essays, stories, blog posts, music reviews and the occasional (terrible) poem – we all need a vice.