I don’t suppose he thought
about it much— the silver fish
we caught dumped in the plastic pail,
their slip and curl and gasp
when he poured them in the sink.
But I looked on at his steadiness,
how he took pliers to the skin
after he cut a thin circle round the head
and yanked it off like you undress a doll
with clothes too tight.
Likewise, he gutted them,
a few quick strokes with his fish knife
that held the mirrored scales
in tiny patches on its shaft
until he washed them off.
The guts hauled to the garbage pile
or buried underneath the beans.
Later, tossed in flour and laid out
in a buttered pan for lunch,
the fish were mild in their death
and only spoke of pond and mud
and all that time held in their cold
green world. I ate them
like a tiny prayer, or maybe less
as if I knew such violence
was part of every day, what
I was given in my life.
