American Life in Poetry
A lot of contemporary poems are merely little personal anecdotes set into lines, but I prefer my anecdotes to have an overlay of magic. Here’s just such a poem by Shawn Pittard, who lives in California.
The Silver Fish
I killed a great silver fish,
cut him open with a long
thin knife. The river carried
his heart away. I took his
dead eyes home. His red flesh
sang to me on the fire I built
in my backyard. His taste
was the lost memory of my
wildness. Behind amber clouds
of cedar smoke, Orion
drew his bow. A black moon rose
from the night’s dark waters,
a sliver of its bright face
reflecting back into the universe.
Poem copyright 2011 by Shawn Pittard, from “Standing in the River” (Tebot Bach, 2011), and is reprinted by permission of the author and publisher. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.