The Singing Fish: Revisted

Girl held out to us brothers to take her hand. There were these rivers there in the palm of that hand, there in the hubs of her knuckles; there were these rivers there filled with singing fish. It was this singing fish singing that was what lured us brothers to dive with our hands first in. Those fishes’ song, it was a rusty hook that hooked its barbs into us brothers—it dug its way into our muddy hearts. When Girl gave us brothers her hand and told us to take it, told us to look inside that place, we looked to see if we might see down to the bottom of that river: so that we might see those singing fish that were to us brothers singing up. We looked but still we could not see all the way down, so we waded in slow from the river’s muddy bank. We waded in slow, then we let the water rise up from that singing hollow below. We did not fight it. We let ourselves get reeled in by the singing of those fish. Our boy mouths, we puckered them up to swallow down whole the sound of those fishy singing songs. The moon, too—the moon which was a fish eye shining down all moony eyed from this fish headed sky: the moon was singing now, too. We flopped our muddy-scaled bodies down upon the mud that was made by this river. These fish here, we heard Girl say: these boys here: these’re a couple of keepers. We flexed our muscles, shook our tails, we flared out our hairs until they hackled up from the backs of our razor-stubbled necks. Then, we waited for what we knew was bound to happen to us next. It was a long few seconds. The skies above the river where the steel mill stood like some sort of a shipwreck—it was dark and quiet. Somewhere, I was sure, the sun was shining. And so us brothers, we started up singing: and we kept on singing, we kept on singing when, and we kept on singing louder, when we saw Girl fish out with her other hand that mud rusty knife and then raise it over our heads. And so like this, we lifted our heads. We sang like singing fish: sang until Girl brought that knife down over the sky of us brothers and chopped off our boy heads.

Peter Markus’s work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Quarterly West, New Orleans Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Third Coast, 3rd Bed, as well as on-line at failbetter, 5_Trope, Pindeldyboz and previous issues of taint.

[ peteyboymarkus@yahoo.com ]