wildscape. literary journal

The Fish Weir
by Mikal Wix

Today, I open the sergeant fish
and reveal its fairy heart inside
the silver ghost my father hooks.
I know I've laughed out of turn
as he lands a palm on my cheek,
glowing coral, a medusa loose
to drift the current in search of fire.

I turn back to the silent animal,
its eye fixed on mine, still wet,
gutted. The swim bladder strives
to be neutral, buoyant, heard
swapping volumes of air to plunge,
then rise. Hot words, a lure
still stuck in his mandible, unreflecting
the vanity of scales we brood over.
I hover, suspended in murk, bloody
chambers spilling to the pilings.
A whipping boy, caught and taught.

I want to fly with the swallow-tailed kites,
toss bits to the frigate birds
and pink roseate spoonbills—but I fall back
to the pitiless bull shark fathers,
submit again to the primeval sawfish
brothers, all the brutish, russet
contractions binding us in viscera,
to Cape Sable, to Chokoloskee Bay
and its islands of Calusa middens,
these opalescent oyster shells
tossed for millennia. Even our mothers
must wade into the mouth
of Dismal Key, where the vanilla orchids
skirr, juking and jiving, a deviant
portent like Jacob's ladder dream.

But maybe my father and brothers will
glimpse the Seminole twilight fade
and release me from their foul fish weir
before their mania and rage take root
in me, before I become this fish-eyed cipher
standing at my own cleaning table,
mistaking cruelty for strength, teaching
that silence tastes of salt,
before I learn to gut what I love, too.

about the author // Mikal Wix