Into Life

Mouths that breathe like fish out of water
Faster then slower pursed lips then gaping mouths billowing chests and all

The fixed stare that gives its sense up and over to other sense and reflex

I can’t bear it
And am frightened
Of the dorsal fins fanning out to puncture the hand that wants the hook

Out of the mouth to throw the fish back in

I don’t blame the fish its indiscriminate violence it cannot know
It was my daughter's hand that threaded the bait and cast the line

She too wants them back in the water
But can’t let go of the desire
To catch what she can’t see but knows is teeming

An idea of absence a little Blue
Heron partakes in and dives after
Each fish I unhook and toss into life

And not once did the bird come up beak-filled or gulping

I eat fish same as I eat rabbit

Without nearing the look on its face
When my mother would grab it
By its long ears the blade approaching

Then skinning it by hand like peeling a banana

The fish’s pulled out and is plopped on the deck
Fluttering like a startled bird or an epileptic

I pin it down by the gills with my index
Retrieve the hook with my other hand

Then under and across its belly where the spikes are short
I dart it

That’s before I thought of a towel

That stare that white light
Of the day’s operating theater burning

The retina like a flash without an image
To behold a clean slate a blank page

A summation of color in the final cortex
(Which fishes don’t have)

Then the electric shock the pain of coming
Back into life

 
Fady Joudah

Fady Joudah's second collection of poetry, Alight, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in winter 2013. His translations of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry have earned him a PEN prize and a TLS/Banipal prize. He is the 2007 winner of the Yale Series Younger Poets Competition for his collection The Earth in the Attic. His translations of Ghassan Zaqtan's poetry is available from Yale University Press.

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