Artwork by Khan & Kowarski. Courtesy of ArtChowk Gallery
Waterside like a reed:
it is a lazy afternoon.
And he is so at ease, so very
peaceful, I can hear him age,
the echoes of a circle rippling their way
through his blood-wet flesh.
He casts far-reaching polls
like fishing line, reels in
slightly as he reclines
in his folding chair.
Waits for a tug at the bait:
a book with blank pages strung
from the hook of a question mark.
A perch is snagged
by the cheek.
Plato, he calls it before tossing it back;
says it seems unwise to
keep a fish with no eyes.
Next, a salmon thrown back into the
stoic reflection of
a cloudy sky:Â Sartre.
Bass. Beauvoir.
Kant. Carp.
Two splashes.
No hesitation.
My face misspells curiosity as confusion,
and he corrects me,
forceful yet politely gentle,
well trained in the
pedagogy of experience.
He explains that I do not
understand what retirement truly means,
that he fishes for sport,
not because he has to eat;
he can make one year
stretch for twenty.
Old age fills his stomach just fine,
satisfies the very deep
hunger of ask.
~ Cortney Lamar Charleston
Cortney Lamar Charleston lives in New Jersey. An alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania and its Excelano Project performance poetry collective, his verse explores the hallways in his mind walked least often. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in publications such as Bird’s Thumb, Gravel, Kinfolks Quarterly, Linden Avenue, Lunch Ticket and Specter Magazine.
