1 poem
THE MEAT OF THINGS
She slid the knife blade down the belly of the trout,
appreciating that thousands of such slices of sustenance
are made by other hands as sure as hers every day,
perhaps at that very moment, in all corners of the world.
Crouched in her dirt driveway next to a bucket of water,
she scooped out the trout’s innards
and dropped them onto an open newspaper,
burying yesterday’s headlines in a satisfying pile
she’d compost after dinner.
She turned the gutted fish to let the late sun’s rays
shimmer along its silvery shanks one last time
before dunking it in water, though not the water
it had gasped for when she’d yanked it
from the Arkansas that morning.
Was it still a fish now that it had been so hollowed out,
diminished to a literal shell of its former self?
She flipped open the cooler packed with ice and other ghost trout
and made one more deposit. Enough for now, she thought,
securing the lid. Enough for a few days.
She wiped her knife on a rag, dumped the bucket,
lifted the cooler by its handle, and turned
to see her two small children still
where she’d known they’d stay,
at the smudged picture window
of her single-wide,
watching, waiting, wanting
what only she could provide.
A native of Syracuse, New York, and a graduate of Syracuse University, Karen DeGroot Carter has lived in Colorado for over 20 years. Her first novel, One Sister’s Song, was published by a small indie press in Denver; her short stories have received awards and mentions from Writer’s Digest and Glimmer Train Stories; and her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in online and print publications, including Literary Mama and Publishers Weekly. She works as an editor in the marketing department of a financial firm and is represented by the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.