The Singing Fish

2002 Jim Jones Award for a Work of Fiction by an Author Who Nobody’s Heard of but Nevertheless Has Attained a Kind of Cult Status Despite the Fact that Neither His Editors Nor His Groupies Can Spell His Name Right

One night Girl is so sound asleep sleeping that her sleeping body becomes a cave and us brothers, we climb inside. Inside, it is not dark inside. Inside, there is a light inside that does not shine from someplace outside. Outside, the moon is a fish swimming in some river that is unseen to us brothers and our mud clouded eyes. Us brothers, what we see, inside this cave, we see pictures —stick figure drawings—on these mud caved walls. These pictures, stick scribble scraped across these made out of mud walls—these pictures—they are pictures of us boys. These pictures, us brothers, we know that they are pictures of us. Oh, these stick figure boys with their round moon faces and with their stick figure arms and their stick figure legs, stick figure fingers sticking out to the sides of their stick figure bellies: oh yes, they are us. And words. There are these words there, too—these words—they’ve got to be words: what else could they be? Isn’t every thing a word hidden and hiding as something else?—these words that are scribbled and scrawled up and down and all across these walls on the inside of this cave: this cave that this one night Girl’s sleeping body, this is what it becomes. But us, we all of us know this. But these words—these things that look like words—these markings that are carved into these walls: they look too much like words not to be words. But these words, these words, what is it that these words mean, or say: what are these words here trying to tell us? Us brothers, it’s true that us brothers: this we do not know: not yet. We cannot yet read them, these things that we call words: not with our eyes and not with our ears do we hear what these words they are saying. So what we do is this: we give it a try, to break into what they are saying—no, not with our eyes, our ears: but we look at these words with our boy hands. We take them into our hands. See us lay our hands across them. Our hands with half moons shining up and out from beneath our gnawed down nails. Our hands that are stars, are starfish—our hands with knuckles that are rivers that run deep. These are the hands that us brothers, we touch them, our hands, up and down upon these walls with these words written in them. We close our eyes to let our hands do this seeing. This is what they see. They see mud and fish and river. They see moon and girl and brother. Our hands, us brothers, we keep on looking with our hands, and we do not stop looking until the words themselves—mud and fish, moon and river, brother and girl—they become bones: no, fingers. No no, they become tongues. No, they become fish. No, they become singing fish singing in the palms of our hands.

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 ]