Selected Poems

Intracoastal

Doc Belcher sits on the pier, throws out a line
for bull reds coming in from the Gulf.
A barge passes, and gulls forage behind.
They float and dip like a net in the salty,
heavy air. Doc listens to their harsh, selfish cries:
the cry of lungs sucking the shore’s black mud.
Everything’s a metaphor for what he hates. 
He leans back, snaps a live, transparent shrimp
onto his treble hook, then casts and waits
for something good to happen. His float limps
over the crest of every wave. If he nets 
a big fish he holds it up to see its scales
blaze and shimmer in the morning sun, 
to watch it gasp, his red and cancerous lung.

(published in Shenandoah)