NEWS

(Marguerite Williams photo)

At breakfast my father sat with my uncles
and cousins, chair cocked back,
napkin wadded in his lap. He lifted his hands
to describe just how it would be—
flounder gigging at night.

A bright moon to light the sand
and coils of light snaking the surf,
his big flashlight would catch
the sand shapes of fish swaddled
in the shallows washing to shore.

The gig’s my knife lashed to a broom handle
with rope, its end coiled and ready to throw.
Makes a good harpoon. My father
described his quiet moves, described creeping
up on the sleeping fish, spearing it, hauling it,

yanking its writhing from the blade
and dropping it into his burlap bag.
Only the men and boys out in the night
to take their turns with the flashlight,
the gig, until the moon swapped horizons

and they fell into their beds. The next morning
I found seven flounder in the red cooler,
stiff and slimed, both their eyes
side by side on one side of their heads
looked at nothing. And I lifted them

from ice the scent of a winter sea and one by one
cut their heads off. My job. I gutted each one,
scraped off their scales and rinsed them away.
I’m the girl in the kitchen.
                                         My knife’s sharp as any.