Yellow Mama E zine

ANGLER’S NIGHTMARE

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by Michael Keshigian

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He thinks the fish

he landed,

the huge striped bass’s eye

sees a monster’s face,

a demon with soft hands of fire

that boils its slick body

in the acid of air

with a tease

from the hook’s barb

that now knits

the gasping jaw closed.

He imagines himself

such beautiful meat

with a cruel demise,

no longer privy

to the love and seclusion

of the black emptiness

from which it was snatched.

He places the rod

upon the sand

and enters the ocean

until he can taste the salt

then asks the tide

to mend all wounds

on the motionless flesh

in his extinguished hands,

that it might again

have life

and return to the bounty

of the cold world

in the dark coral depths

where this bass

might then dream of him

in the bottomless sea,

of his hands

and his sorrowful blue eyes.

 

        Michael Keshigian's latest poetry collection, Poems from the Sky, was recently released by Cyberwit.com and is available on Amazon. He has recently been published in The Tipton Poetry Journal, Studio One, Smoky Quartz, Panoply, among many others and has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize and three times for Best of the Net.

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      Image Credit: Fishermen on a small boat in the Gulf a few miles off of Dauphin Island, Alabama. The adjacent structure is an Exxon-Mobile oil derrick. Photography from a tour boat, and photo art by John C. Mannone (July 2015)

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     John C. Mannone is a scientist, poet, CNF essayist, fiction writer, and poetry editor who creates derivative visual art and photo art for speculative poems in Abyss & Apex, Silver Blade (on hiatus), and ADR Poetry (defunct). His photography/art appears or is forthcoming on the anthology cover of the 2026 Tennessee Voices and inside Chattanooga Writers Guild anthologies. He currently serves on the artists staff of Yellow Mama Literary Magazine. His literary work appears widely in Artemis, Critical Humanities, The New England Journal of Medicine, and others. He’s the Poet Laureate for the City of Oak Ridge, TN (2026-2028).