Cleaning the Catfish

I fix fish to board with a nail through its head,
slice a line behind the gills, grip pliers, and pull
away the gray skin. It peels off like a wet wool
sock, revealing tender flesh. “Is it dead?”
my daughter whispers. When my dad taught me this
I too recoiled, half-shocked to watch my main
source of love drive a spike through the brain
of something until then alive. When I kiss
her forehead, tucking her in tonight, will she think
of being flayed? I don’t ask. I don’t try to hide
the ribbons of guts in my hand, the sudden violence.
I toss the entrails into the lake where they sink
like bait through murk and weeds. Back by her side,
I hand her my old knife. We work in silence.

 

The Child Who Follows the Child Who Dies

You didn’t ask to smuggle light across
the tar-dark doorway of our family home,
but here you are. Resolve what poem after poem
could not: genetic damage, albatross
of cells destroyed inside an autoclave,
the nameless, shapeless ghost of medical waste.
Baby, I’ll never tell you how you chased
away the looters from the grave–the grave
that was the empty crib you sleep in now.
Instead, a myth: I found you in a field.
The locals said the soil was toxic, dead
except for weeds. But flowers bloomed, somehow.
You waited there with patience, beneath a shield
of yarrow, gold rays pulsing from your head.