BPR 53 | 2026
When you catch
a fish and slip
your knife’s blade
from its vent
to the impossibly
delicate skin
beneath the gills,
when you watch
the wet jewels
of the guts slide
out—and see
the swim bladder,
strange dirigible,
secret of the fish’s
mastery of water—
you can feel
with thumb and finger
the lumpy ribbon
of the stomach
for some clue to what
it’s fed on: hellgrammite,
minnow, crawfish,
midge. Once,
in the belly
of a northern pike,
a duckling’s skull.
We carry our
brutalities inside us,
and by our wounds
they are revealed.