ahem! cough! cough! ahem !

                  Breaking Fish Necks                                            












The next afternoon we tried anal sex
and as you coaxed my neck with your thumbs

I thought of Wolf’s Creek
and the fish you wouldn’t catch,

plump trout necks you couldn’t bear to break
and take home dead to your mother.

In the warmth I knew my arse
was soft, the downy peach.

But what was beyond drew you in:
a core, sensitive, harsh

like a peachstone –
its coarse ridges, fine strings

caught in grooves
where flesh is torn raggedly away.

Here, at the kernel
of spine, cat’s-cradle of muscle,

you tried to undo me, cupping my hips
with your hands, breaking me patiently.

As we paused, I did loosen
but held together

around this hardness,
in the brace of your arms

till we rolled apart
and I healed slowly over.

You stopped fishing years ago.
You only used the stillness,

the bronze film of water
to will the fish deeper.

You couldn’t watch them
choke on air or feel the snap

of delicate bones
between forefinger and thumb.

Or walk the mile home
swigging a beer

with a wet chill on your hands,
and flashes of silver skin

too easily become
the dead weight of flesh

slung at the bottom
of your pack.






                    Sally Read - poetess convert  to Catholicism
                              - a stunning recent find


























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