Feeder
I know a fisher who likes to be out catching the black sea
and the striped, unhooking, and releasing them after, hours
in a T-Top on the blue or gray bay abundant in spring, all
retirement needs to be, scup or fluke home on the plate,
and I listened to a man revising invention speak about chad’s
cortisol levels rising when touched but seconds by human hands,
the flow feeder added before the plastic tube that sucks migration
over a dam built once to make a stream, freshwater power,
and the pregnant salmon I do not know who floosh 250 feet
through uninhibited memory in eleven seconds to arrive hooked
by the paws and jaws of Ursus americanus or swirled by soothing
home currents, are releasing populations to feed habit—fish, fisher alike.
*Note: Mention is made of the salmon cannon by Whooshh Innovations.
Mood
That low feeling that arrives like an unsnapped bra when you are fully dressed, out in public, with its instant draping of the confidence so recently buoyant, disguised for the moment,
yet with no relief on top of no foundational support, coming as it does in the words of critique for a performance seemingly acceptable, after a party to celebrate, by a person
invited by you to share, is yours to contend with. Uneasy zeniths cool your skin to accentuate exposure that only you will feel in the climate of your clothing, although the straps
slipping as you walk and weirdly rotate your shoulder to adjust the slights, aren’t working, and if anyone wanted to notice the crumple you carry delicately and certainly, they’d look away.
Amy Holman is the author of the poetry collections Captive (Saddle Road Press, 2023) and Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010), as well as four chapbooks, and a writer’s guide. She is delighted to have poems appear again in Gargoyle. She is a literary consultant to writers, one of the poetry editors at The Westchester Review, and writes about what kind of writing editors want for her monthly substack What Where: Literary Journals. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.