This unnatural light
like the last summer
before the last winter
sends the grackles
into the cedars
rattling their wings
in the evergreens
making a sound like Ishmael
casting his bones
on the deck of Ahab's ship.

I'm so very downtown. There goes
a train overhead in the neon rain.
For some vauge reason I love to
watch my windshield cry after I've
grabbed all the happiness a hundred bumper stickers can muster.

Written by Sara Fielder © May 2017

I feel like a child unable to give up hope.
Come inside.
It will probably start to rain soon.
I know I'm not the best shelter.

The pressure keeps building.
And although I've never failed them,
they keep going and going,
Pressuring me until I'm at wits' end.

Ashamed, rejected, revoked, repressed,
like a whale distinct from the others
by its own, unique tone,
I'm forced to wander alone
in this vast, ocean of people cold as stone.

Indeed, I'm at my wits' end
The pent up emotions of which I cannot contain
are all about to burst, but still, I refrain
because who likes to be pressured
under certain circumstances so mundane?
So mundane, that in fact they can never, EVER
Weigh as much as I can contain.

I'm a bomb. And indeed, I'm about to blow up
the fuse within me is already lit up
in a minute or so, the culprits who had set me up
Will be blown away by my sudden rage.
But if only they had the courage to douse me
with their water of forgiveness,
then perhaps in a few seconds or less,
My fuse would cease in its track.

Still, they were careless, careless in my handling
It seems my fuse will still keep on going
Once I explode, they will be loathing.

The pressure keeps building.
And although I've never failed them...

...they WILL keep on going and going.

My younger brother still fishes
when he can, when the weather
is agreeable, when he can afford
some tackle and beer for the cooler.

He sits alone on the river bank
and smokes and drinks and waits
in the shifting shade of cottonwoods
for the unmistakable pull on the line.

He fishes whether
the fish are biting
or not. He is intimate with
psychology and the placid
deceit of undisturbed water.

My brother is an angry man.

As kids, we fished
together on the dock
and killed them
with our hands.

Careful not to kneel
on scattered hooks,
we baited the lines
on our knees a foot
above brackish water.

We dropped fish heads
off the edge of the dock
and watched them float
down, almost out of sight,
settling into final stillness
only to snap back to life
(or the false throes of death)
by the white claws of *****
picking them into oblivion—
goodbye eyes,
goodbye gills,
goodbye teeth,
goodbye scales.

Brother, I don’t remember anymore:
was it triumph or merely shame
that left us shivering in the sun?

The night
the moon
that woman
in tight jeans
the brave
and the lonely
drifters
we all drink
from the same pool
so when we meet
let's go down together
sane, ******, drunk
whatever
like those indigo
dragonflies
of spring
who will be
here right soon,