with animal goo. Residue of breath
and struggle. The news gets worse
each day. All the fish go murky blind,
swim into cabins of reeds. Somewhere,
another gun, another fire. The fish can’t
find their way out. They wait for rescue
that doesn’t come. The fish end up
at the boggy bottom, flesh-rot and nothing
but a stand of marsh grass marking
their graves. A town of fish death
that continues to grow. We pile
our hurts in an inside place. They
turn into cities, they turn into worlds.
The Marsh Fills Up
Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, Passages North, and many others. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and (The Theory of Flesh.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) was published by ELJ September, 2021. She lives in NYC.