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cleaning the fish
B.J. Best
© 2008Portland Review Literary Journal

1.
the fillet knife found the gill
then slid in like a thunderstreak
digging for worms.  the fish
accepted it like anesthesia,
and soon knew air up the throat,
soon knew scales askew.
its tail fanned like a paintbrush,
painting the board with thin blood.

2.
it takes flour sifted like wind
through the pines, and soon your thumb
fat as a bobber is pressing meat
beneath the surface of the lake
of the bowl.  basil.  garlic salt.
pepper ground fine as ash
from the cigarette of a man
in a fishing boat drinking beer.
the fish sizzle as if they were flying.

3.
the fly rod is an alloy of trigonometries,
deriving the parabolas to snag the hook
on that tree, this log.  the wind
has been out of the south for five days,
the same ripples etched in water like grooves
in sandstone.  the fly is neon yellow,
the sunset neon pink.  the fish
are not particularly bright.

4.
thus decapitated, the fish heads
amass on the deck like a mound
of old gumdrops.  they are astonished
at their weightlessness and the wind
playing the harmonica of their gills.
for minutes they’ll move their mouths
in lucid circles, trying out language
to describe this new, sudden thing:
no water, no tail, no algal bloom,
just the coolness of empty
and a bird’s broken wing.