[New-Poetry] All aboard!

[jforjames at aol.com]

Rough Fish


Under the creosote and rust of a railway trestle,
three older boys fish for carp. They finish off 
a few cans of beer that one of them snuck out 
of the house, not worried about getting caught,
because his dad will just think he drank it all last night 
and go buy some more. The only line 
in the water was nibbled clean hours ago,
but no one pulls it up and checks it. The bait 
smells bad, a stink not easy to wash from your hands. 
This isn't exactly fishing, it's about getting out 
of those sweat-box shotgun houses 
that line the depot road, and lying back in the high weeds
where it's cool down along the riverbank. Besides, 
the fish really aren't good for eating, full of bones
and hard to clean, and the heavy metals 
in these waters seem to have made their scales 
thick as hammered armorplate. Some say these rough fish 
grow big as the wrecked Buicks and Dodges 
that you can half-see, submerged, lying off the shallows. 
One of the boys will finish highschool 
and work till he retires at the refinery, 
one will steal cars and do a short stretch 
before he marries a girl who gets him righted, 
one will get hit by a train, having passed out
unaware of the moonlight shining on the tops of the rails,? 
the burnished steel indicating a well-used spur of track. 
For now their life is this one long afternoon, a summer
without work and a circle of butts on the ground
like hour marks on a clock of dirt,
their prospects thin as a lottery ticket 
left in the back pocket of someone's cutoffs, 
a slip of paper and maybe the winning numbers 
melting away when one them gets too hot
and says he's going in for a swim.



--


________________________________________________________________________
AOL now offers free email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/pipermail/new-poetry/attachments/20070814/0f8ac094/attachment.html