the fisherman throws his net
sat home when he eats
he sits alone
he lights a candle on the table
his plate is round as the moon
he peels the skin of his fish with his fork and knife
peeling it back like a bedsheet
he is always awake before the sun
the fish they do not sleep long
sometimes at night
when he has been drinking heavily
he goes to the rocks at the shore and reads to the fish
he reads to them poems
from books
poems about the human condition
poems about the muscles inside of him that shake and shiver and quiver
question and sleep
he reads
bottle in one hand
book in the other
books clutching poems like they were mothers
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 never hold him like that again he thinks
like a little boy
I am too big
book in one hand
and bottle in the other
he reads out loud poems that he hates
ones that fill him with spite
spitting the letters out like bones or like teeth he no longer needed
he stands on the rocks
while the storms fall around him
like a flock of ballooned corpses
he screams
like a drunk preacher cutting a ropes
lurring his screams
picking up poems like stones
hurling them at the foot of God’s throne
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
the fish sleep
and wake
and sleep
and awaken again and again in the rocking of the ocean
above
he stands like a Noah surrounded by bucket after overflowing bucket
and all he has left
to catch this wet lightning
is this open mouth
so he reads to the fish
he reads to them about things none of them will ever see
about flowers opening
about birds soft as elderly skin large as cliffs
holding heroes between their silver feathers
carrying these men into the open grace of the gods
and into a mighty providence that this fisherman sleeps stands beneath and
inside of
their shields and shoulder
spolished hard enoughto blind the sun right back
he empties himself
he empties
and the waves they……he goes home
falls into bed
sleeps all the next day
night comes into his window like a fever
like a mother coming to hold him
he wakes
goes to the kitchen
lights his candle
sets the table
cooks his audience
and peels back its skin like a bedsheet
before crawling inside
—-anis mojgani
