And it will never seem to be
complete, until mid-day or evening
when, shaken from paper
or dark corner of philosophy, you begin
the next step, you who forgave
the hated one – that you would actually
finish this – speak Septimus Smith’s truths
and your own – and you forget
that you already spilled them
to the undeserving. He is the victim,
not the solution. You never really grasped
that his death never became
communication, and our propensity
to hurt each other is the norm,
and you think on the label,
realizing it’s all arbitrary, but you can’t help him,
emptying the bottle, the doctor of humanity,
the girl in the hallway
praising herself for jail time.
You speak the truths over and over.
You want to hold him back. You want –
oh, it’s the same old story – you want
normal misery, not all this. Not all these
open windows where you perch,
waiting to jump.
Sister, we died in childhood, remember?- Li-Young Lee
baiting your hook, setting the bobber,
casting the line out, avoiding a snag –
pay attention, your bobber just went under.
Just a nibble or two. Okay, now set the hook,
make sure it doesn’t swallow it. Now reel
it in, not too fast – make it fight a bit. Now,
bring it to me, closer. You let it swallow the hook.
Don’t worry, I’ll get it out. Grasp the stomach,
avoid the spines on the fins, twist –
bones crunch under metal. A flash of bright red
gill and a lidless eye. Hook unearthed,
worm missing in action. Blood and fish slime
against my palm. Catch and release. The fish
atop the water, useless in its struggle against
sun and air. We haul it in using a net
made of hair and fingers, digging our heels
into mud, so we don’t fall in. Further up
on the bank, we stroke the stripes
along its sides, to try to find ourselves between
scales and water, only to come up
with tangled line and rusty lures.
Jessica Thelen is a poet from Western Massachusetts, studying English/Literature and Philosophy at Westfield State University. She recently finished her first chapbook, titled "SISTER|RETSIS," and is currently writing new work.