I was a novice angler.
A junkie, nodding out,
Whispered, come a little
Closer—I’m going to
Let you in on a secret.
She pulled out her
Fillet knife & stabbed
Me just below my ribs
& started to laugh. As
I strained for oxygen,
The opposite I imagined
Of a fish flopping on
The dock, I flashed to
Eels darting & accumulating
In my newly decaying body.
She giggled that the knife
Was only rubber, which
Reminded me of random
Reinforcement, how you
Never know; that’s
The thing about fishing.
Photo by Adeel Anwer 
BRUCE COHEN's poems have appeared recently in AGNI, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Harvard Review, The New Yorker, Ploughshares, & The Southern Review. He has published five volumes of poetry, most recently No Soap, Radio (Black Lawrence Press) and Imminent Disappearances, Impossible Numbers & Panoramic X-Rays, which was awarded the 2015 Green Rose Prize from New Issues Press.
Latest posts by Bruce Cohen (see all)
- Trout Fishing with Heroin Addicts - April 20, 2018
- 4 Poems - July 21, 2016
