Kenneth Fish Poetry

Catbird

there’s a catbird in the Xylosma
not nesting, exactly, but living
or hiding from the rain that’s recently returned
after just one day to drain
assess the damage and be thankful for none

the catbird flits about
and I can’t decide if
it is doing so nervously
or in a rather cavalier fashion
chi-chi-chippering away
either to herself or at me

she’s peeking through the cool dark of her dense shelter
from branch to branch hopping
getting up to eye level
maybe to assess the threat
and be thankful for none

I, perhaps nervously, step away
from the bulging hedge
begging to be pruned
pack a bowl
and smoke it
as the catbird looks on

In Between

driving
but dilly-dallying
really
daydreaming
over the hills
the miles of vines
the corners of which I’m cognizant
but just barely
the dead barn owl with one wing flapping in the breeze of a car just gone by
the cows
cute but stinky
and thankfully organic
the jibber-jabber on the radio
the cool rush of air from the window on the far side of the truck
the miles
really
the miles
they rush at me and under me and into infinity beyond the back bumper
and then the sun pushing up and into
pushing
the sky in the mirrors brightens and lightens and makes itself known
and when I look up at the mountain range that stands between me and the massive expanse of Pacific
the fog just barely spilling over
pink

Source Code

unbending on breaking into a series of handshakes and deals
contracts written into existence post facto
words situated to fit the situation just as the unfolding takes place
(is this equal and opposite?)
more than making a fuss over
this documentation
more than just a casual observation

the parties involved take parts neither are quite sure of
the definitions of which lay unfinished in a heap somewhere
notes scribbled, things referred to as “paperwork”
ellipses taking the place of, or implying meaning where any has yet to settle despite the appearance of agreement or sense of propriety

this is where bleak formality is layered in
where the comfort of conformity trumps the ideas of action
where the questions, in all the forms they’re known to adopt
whether posture or postulation, blossom into a thing more important than that for which they strive
– the answer is the terminal, the question, the journey

between that which is developing
the cause and effect
the nuance
the roles implemented
the desire to imagine
to backfill and anticipate that which is not apparent, becomes the beauty of the action taken
makes connections
makes that upon which we endeavor a voyage instead of mere motion.

Remembering Mason’s Stoup

The colony provides a certain sense of security.
We dreamed of boundaries
and of distance, of lines imparted on charts
scrawled
and, then often
reconfigured on what would eventually
become the maps on which we base various aspects of our
belief systems.

These are just lines, you see,
on paper
no less
or cloth
divined not by the hand of God mind you, but out of a vague mix of un-knowing perceived advantage
& the kind of greed inspired by what must have been thought of at the time as an infinite resource.

On one side of any given line
imagined, drawn, or published
capacities are anticipated
territories squeezed into acres are thought of in terms of
yield & bounty
investment & return
and the dangers of the yet undiscovered.

This is the point where potential is neutral, where there is as much to offer as there is to lose.

Habitation is a state of mind
as is ownership, and claims staked
in the name of…
for the queen of…
with God as our witness.

Imagine the audacity
or was it the will to live(?)
to step
as if naked into what could only be considered the unknown
the planet’s edge
the edge of what could be.

Imagine the dreams
the thoughts of prayers coming true
the wide-eyed wonder of a world brand new.

This is the frying pan.

This is the fire.

Out of Town Guests

*This was originally submitted to Round 7 of the NPR Three Minute Fiction contest* It didn’t win.

They came in on a mid-afternoon train from Boston to Mystic, stowed away in the dark folds of Ginny’s unmentionables deep within her suitcase. She was excited to see her boyfriend after a month in Europe, but not nearly as excited as the guests she was unwittingly transporting from the bay-side hotel she stayed in after her long flight from Paris. The hunger-bubbles in the bellies of her stowaways were growing, and there was only one thing that would appease their appetite, and that was blood, tasty human blood.

It’s not that this multi-generational, extended family wasn’t happy living in Ginny’s dirty laundry, but they all were looking forward to a new place to stay and a hot meal. Even bedbugs enjoy a little travel and some foreign food once in a while. Luckily for them, since Ginny’s boyfriend, John, lived in the house in the middle of the train station parking lot, both was only a short walk away.

Ginny and John were in the middle of a whirlwind spring-fling turned summer-romance when Ginny’s job sent her off to Paris to cover the goings-on surrounding fashion week. For a month she bounced around from party to party, hotel to hotel, hobnobbing with the fashion elite, updating her renowned fashion column with candid pictures, and all the racy behind the scenes details she encountered along the way. Naturally jealous, John could barely handle her going away so soon after they met, but the numerous pictures she posted every day of herself and all those chiseled male models really wound his guts into tight, sickening knots.

John was excited to see Ginny, and by the time she’d unloaded her suitcase onto his bed, sorting the dirty clothes from the clean, his urge to lustfully pounce upon her won out over the jealousy that was simmering inside him, but just barely. The bedbugs, now more terrified than hungry, quickly scattered to the safety of their new-found home in John’s bed. As the late afternoon sky dimmed to a pale blue, the two of them indulged in each other passionately, a mix of animalistic rawness and pristine, young love. By the time the sun had fully set, the two of them laid spent, a tangle of limbs and twisted sheets, each reliving the afternoon in quick flashes and silly grins.

Soon, however, John’s jealous mind got the best of him, and his blissful bedroom cooing was replaced with a litany of questions, each more pointed than the last. Ginny bristled and pulled herself away from John, and the hungry bedbugs took a chance and began to make their way to a much needed supper. As Ginny angrily packed her suitcase, John’s jealousy became remorse, and John’s legs became a banquet for his still undiscovered guests.

By the time Ginny and John were done screaming at each other, the bedbugs were plump with blood and quite content with their new home. By the time Ginny was on the next northbound train, John began to realize that his jealous demeanor and short fuse made him a bachelor once again. At the same time, a bite from one of his new bedbug buddies began to burn and itch. Weeks later, John figured out why his sheets were covered in little dots of blood, and it was longer, still, before he made the connection that each fresh bite may be a tasty bit of karma for the way he treated Ginny. Sometimes life’s lessons are lost, sometimes they linger in the dark and bite you when you least expect it.

False Promises

© Kenneth C. Fish Jr.

So, that’s what it feels like to pretend, he thought, as he laid in bed staring at the water-stained ceiling, trying to fall asleep for what felt like the millionth time in his fifteen years of living. It had been a normal day. It had been a rough day. In Abel McIntyre Junior’s family, there was no difference. In his family, in the trailer park with the neighbors that surrounded him like ghouls from a house of horrors, the best days for him would likely kill any other kid, he always thought.

Abel knew how other kids lived, and it wasn’t like him. He could see their houses on the soft, rounded hills across the Mystic River through the loose glass slats of the crank-open windows in his tiny wood-paneled bedroom. They had yards with grass and swing sets in them where children played all summer, and mounds of colorful flowers that gleamed in the most carefree way from mid-spring to mid-autumn. Even in the winter when those same hills were just grey mounds spiked with the craggy skeletons of oaks and maples, the houses glowed golden and warmly, twinkling on the coldest of days when there was ice in the air and the river looked as if it was frozen solid.

They lived in actual houses, and those houses they lived in didn’t have wheels under them. This fact alone seemed to provide those kids with some sense of permanence and security that Abel never knew. This fact alone, Abel sometimes caught himself believing, raised them up above him and his ever-toiling Ma, Ethel, and drunkard Da, Abel Senior, and their house with the wheels underneath it just in case they needed to make a run for it again.

“Pretending,” his mother always said “is much better than reality.” For Abel, there was always a certain disconnect between that mantra of hers and how he thought he lived his life. He never thought what he was doing was pretend, it felt more like protection. It was what he did to make do as the poor kid who lived in the trailer park that was essentially used as a halfway-housing complex for the underfunded and understaffed loony bin on the edge of this otherwise rich white town. For Abel, it was survival.

* * * * * * * * * *
“Don’t you ever change your pants?” taunted Fred, the super-popular star of the soccer team at school. “I can smell those filthy things from here.” The reality of it was, Abel rarely did change his pants. In fact, he only owned three pairs; one for every day, one for Sunday, and one for the rare occasion when Ethel would sneak their dirty laundry into the laundry room of the loony bin where she and her sorry excuse for a husband, Abel Sr., worked.

Abel always loved laundry day. He relished the brief moment when the few clothes he had were stiff and crisp and smelled like the industrial detergent they used to kill off every biting, burrowing, stinging, blood-sucking creepy-crawly he imagined inhabiting the flesh of all those crazies where his parents worked. Every time he slipped into a clean pair of trousers or a fresh shirt he felt, if only for a second, reborn.

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