LATE SUMMER VACATION on THE LAKE
It is September. Six feet from a shale-lined shore
a small-mouth bass swims—dorsal erect; confused
in the water weeds. This is a dying fish and he
has found me on the phone with my lover,
pacing the dry-line. The bass follows closely
as he says, again disappointedly,
…but I’m giving you all I can.
Evening wake knocks the dying fish against
the stones in a hollow named Mirror Cove.
It’s so close I see his speckled body; slick in green
Tennessee water. Nine months ago, I miscarried
my lover’s baby; he held me in the winter mornings
as I bled. And now, 600 years later, we bark back
and forth about pain into a phone. I watch the bass.
Death follows a cursed woman, I am convinced.
Erica Anderson-Senter lives and writes in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Pieces have appeared in Specter, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, CrabFat Magazine, and Midwestern Gothic among others.