The Alphabet Fish

My brothers once showed me the bounty that could be had in bait nets / we were able to catch garfish / bills like half-baked marlin / the rounded quill with a fluorescent orange head; pencil fish, that's what the old diggers called them, and yes, how we had to pen our stories well to con the bait shops into a sale / the confusion in the net / fish all crossing each other / locked in panic / bodies woven to create a multitude of silver letters / many X's . . . T's . . . J's . . . C's / mouths popping, nitrogen starved O's how a young summer whiting, tail flared, once looked the perfect Y / an eel, the picture of a feverish S / we'd pour everything onto the recycled paper surface of Donnybrook's brown sand / the catch a moving paragraph / a funeral notice maybe? / punctuated with the black spots of toadfish / the harpoon of a nervous stingray an exclamation mark / edited before the deadline of a sunset tide . . . Mosquito coil Evenings on the mangroves Boyhood memories . . .