Cleaning Fish

A shimmer of scales moves iridescently in porch light, flying over nicked knuckles, falling to grass milky white. Detached, a rod jerked to deep water, we follow the blade blooming belly to vent-- fingers pluck viscera like harp strings, cut deeply into spine, searching for blood pockets. I, father's sissy, prepare pliers for a peeling of skin. You laugh at the pale bladders of my eyes, watch the hesitant scooping of entrails into newspaper, the scurry between bushes to bury my dead. A white enamel basin is pink with our washing. Outside the window, a blue-veined moon is caught in a crisscross of nesting trees. Dreams float like corks, fish frenzied in gunny sacks. Your eyes are glossy as shells and empty, blindly sensing that resonance of the sea, that catch: the nearness of the day when a furling of scales will come, and these hands will hold living things turned ruby in porch light, taking blood as their own.