Keith Polette

Fish

When I was eight, I found “The Five Chinese Brothers” in a book of folktales on my grandmother’s bookshelf, and what fascinated me more than the ways in which the four older, identical brothers were impervious to the devices of death designed for them, was how the youngest of them was able to inhale the sea, hold it in his mouth – frog-puffed – and then collect the fish that were left behind. And here I paused to imagine them, the legions of fish, flopping in the mud of an endless field, their water world suddenly siphoned off, wriggling like brightly colored dancers having lost their limbs, their unblinking eyes grim with surprise, their gaping mouths screaming in silence, as the boy basketed them, while the circling gulls began their slow descent.

pawnshop
wedding rings glittering
in the window