[New-Poetry] All aboard!

[Anny Ballardini]

I found it:
A stop at Willoughby - directed by Robert Parrish; 1960

part of the series: The Twilight Zone with Rod Serling_

  From: jforjames at aol.com 
  To: new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 8:48 PM
  Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] All aboard!


  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.



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