One good-sized catfish
vacuuming the stream bed.
One trout, swimming against the current,
then letting himself drift back
almost to the rocky shallows.
Imagine no arms.
No legs either. Only fins,
crisply pleated or lacy.
No chin to speak of—
he leads with his mouth.
Pp-pp-pp says the fish
without a vowel.
Maybe to him everything’s appetite,
but the eyes on each side of his head
like train windows for the inner fish
see where he’s going and
where he’s been.
It’s shimmy, shimmy, shimmy all the time
to move his streamlined body from there
to there. He carries nothing extra.
Whatever a fish wants to do
takes the whole fish.
—
Charlotte Muse lives in Menlo Park, California. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies. She’s written five chapbooks and a full-length collection, In Which I Forgive the River (Broadstone Books). Recent awards include finalist for the Orchard Street Press Poetry Prize and a nomination for England’s Forward Prizes, both in 2023. She’s also won the Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize, the Allen Ginsberg Award, and the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, among others.
