The fisherman throws his nets

At night when he eats he sits alone, his plate round as the moon, he lights one candle on his table

He cuts the fish with his fork and his knife, peeling back its skin like a bed sheet

Most mornings he wakes before the sun, for the fish- they don't sleep long.

On some nights when he has been drinking heavily he goes down to the rocks and he reads to the fish.

He reads to them poems.

Poems from books.

Poems about the human condition.

About the muscles inside of him that question and quiver and shiver and sleep.

Bottle in one hand, book in the other.

Books clutching poems like they were their mother too afraid to let their children out into the soft fear of the electric night

And he was the wild one to show them this world.

His mother will not hold him like that again, he thinks. "I am too big."

Book in one hand, bottle in the other while the storms flock behind him like gathering ballooning corpses he screams these poems.

Screaming out the words like they were teeth he no longer needed or cared for

He slurs his screams like a drunk preacher cutting a rope

Picking up poems like they were stones to fling at the foot of God's throne

Hurling word after word after word

Waiting for some door in some black cloud to open up

But nothing happens.

The rain falls

The waves swing

And the fish sleep and awake

And sleep and awake

And again and again

And the rocking of the ocean stands above them like Noah surrounded by bucket after overflowing bucket

And all he has left to catch this wet lightning is his mouth

So he reads to them

He reads to them about things none of them will ever see

About flowers opening

About birds as large as cliffs holding heros between their silver wings

Carrying these warriors into the open brace of the Gods

And in the mighty providence this fisherman stands inside of there are shields and shoulders polished hard enough to blind the sun right back.

He empties himself

And the waves swing

He goes home

Falls into bed

Sleeps all the next day.

Night comes through his window like a dream

Like a fever

Like a mother to hold him close to her

He wakes inside her arms

Goes to his kitchen

Lights his candle

Cooks his audience

And peels back its skin like a bedsheet before crawling inside.