Cheryl Caesar
Fishing From a Truck
Why did I agree
to go fishing from a truck? I hate
the agonized twist of the fish,
the squirm of the worm.
I went because my colleagues were going.
And why did I assume
that the truck would stay on a dock
or a boat? Instead it plunged
from dark air into dark water. Only
the silt plumed lighter around us, like clouds.
And why did I open the windows, try
to pull everyone out? They were fine; they were calm.
They were starting to breathe underwater.
After a while I could too, if not well.
The water felt thick and particulate.
Still, I could pull out the oxygen. I floated up
and swam around. On the banks I could see
the lights of small settlements. Humans
were growing gills, going amphibious. The sea,
I thought, the thing beyond our control. When it ebbs,
we think ourselves on solid ground. It returns,
at random, like the plague; it is always there.
—Submitted on
Cheryl Caesar is the author of the chapbook Flatman: Poems of Protest in the Trump Era (Thurston Howl Publications, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Writers Resist, The Mark Literary Review, Cream and Crimson, Agony Opera, Winedrunk Sidewalk, and The Stay Project, as well as in the anthology Nationalism: (Mis)Understanding Donald Trump’s Capitalism, Racism, Global Politics, International Trade and Media Wars, Africa VS North America Vol 2 (Mwanaka Media and Publishing, 2019), edited by Tendai Rinos Mwanaka. Caesar holds a PhD in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. She teaches writing at Michigan State University.
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