At Your Request
Among Fish Without Eyes
Dumping that wheezing eight track didn't help.
Neither did those voice lessons or the trips
to Nashville, looking for the Carters' home,
nights at the Grand Ole Opry. You act so
old because you are so old. No color
under this cowboy hat. And what should I
write for a man who doesn't know, who keeps
searching for song?
Though you won't stop telling
stories--the children hiding their father's
gun before he got too drunk; children, ten
and twelve, working stores, anything for cash
to buy bread, cigarettes and shoes. But what's
missing in that story? What shadowy
albatross, screeching and deafening you?
Like the blind navigating the damp down here
in the caverns. My son whispers,
turn the light back on, then
our faces reflected in this pool so still
it mirrors even the scar under his brow,
until fish without eyes swarm
through us.
One’s tail erases
my nose, leaves a little wave
in its place. Another slides
through my lips and elongates
my mouth.
Where do we begin? Where do we end?
He dips
his net,
calls me his prisoner,
pokes one where eyes would
be, socket with thin fold of scales
which jerk. Let it go, I say, and when he does,
it twists, rises, lingers on the reflection
of my head. Look, Mommy,
you’ve got a white horn.
Pamela Garvey is the author of the chapbook Fear (Finishing Line Press, 2008), which was a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. She has published poetry and short stories in MARGIE, Esquire, Cimarron Review, RATTLE, North American Review, and The Spoon River Poetry Review. Garvey is an associate professor of English at St. Louis Community College–Meramec and is the cofounder of Words on Purpose, a committee of socially concerned writers who organize benefit literature readings. She earned her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.
