The fish barely fit in Dad’s twelve-pack cooler.
It looked alien mad.
The long, skinny mouth snapped a thousand razor-sharp teeth
at anything that moved.
We all stood still, gathered around the cooler in the dirt,
watching the slow silver breathing.
I don’t know what we expected.
Dad dumped the cooler
just like he would if it was half-melted ice
into a hole under the roses that vined
a few pickets of our backyard fence.
Said it couldn’t be eaten, only good for fertilizer.
The vines grew, and the roses bloomed
button-sized yellow breaths, thick with thorns.
–
Charlene Pierce has been published in Misbehaving Nebraskans, 805 Lit, Quarter(ly), The Wise Owl, The Gilded Weathervane, and others. Her poem in The Good Life Review was nominated for “Best of the Net.” She is a freelance writer and a Merit Scholar in the Pacific University MFA program.