Fisherman’s Sacrament

Hollie Dugas

When I pilfer my bucket of ice 
for a fresh catch, I feel like 
I am taking poems from poets.
Spooning scales from fish-flesh,
I remove poet’s pizzazz, flake 
by flake, I shuck the bluegill’s 
God-given glitter to reach 
his wilderness. And when
my sharp blade tracks through 
the slippery belly, dividing 
my vehicle in two, my body 
floats between worlds with his 
and he seems to look up at me 
from the dock, his mouth 
pleading, water, water, water 
as I tuck three fingers 
into the incision and scoop 
his internal blueprints 
from inner cavity, remove 
the fins— his flimsy torso 
remaining like an aquatic pouch. 
I peer into the bloody darkness 
but, much like a poem, his bones 
linger. So, I don’t stop; 
I slide my knife across his side, 
gill to tail, wrench his backbone 
clean-out, and rinse what is left 
in cold water, his left-over 
portions drying on old newspaper, 
awaiting consumption— the river 
he came from still coursing. 

Hollie Dugas lives in New Mexico. Her work has been selected to be included in Barrow Street, Reed Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Redivider, Pembroke, Salamander, Poet Lore, Watershed Review, Mud Season Review, Little Patuxent Review, Chiron Review, Louisiana Literature, and CALYX. Hollie has been a finalist twice for the Peseroff Prize at Breakwater Review, Greg Grummer Poetry Prize at Phoebe, Fugue’s Annual Contest, and has received Honorable Mention in Broad River Review. Additionally, “A Woman’s Confession #5,162” was selected as the winner of Western Humanities Review Mountain West Writers’ Contest (2017). Recently, Hollie has been nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets 2021. She is currently a member on the editorial board for Off the Coast.