January 2021
Bio Note: My experiences have been for the most part ones that have revolved around my
familiarization with other cultures due to my many travels to Europe, Mexico, Central America, my
residences in both Chile as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and my one year stint as a lecturer at the
University of London. I find that those experiences have forged what I consider to be a global
perspective in much of my work. My work thus far has revolved around poetry, with some forays
into short fiction and translation (Spanish >< English.) I am the author of three chapbooks,
and two full-length collections, In The Garden Of Angels And Demons (2017) and The
Dream Angel Plays The Cello (2019), both from Kelsay Books.
Fisherman X
On one end of the pier in Talcahuano, a fishing village not far from Concepción, Chile, fishermen gather around the side of the pier and a commotion ensued for something being hauled up onto the pier by another man in a boat. A body, large and rigid, like a huge fish, is shoved and pulled headfirst above the lip of the concrete pier. The man’s head, its eyes open, seemed to stare into the dawn’s brightness, a cruel reality between his night and day, after he had set out the night before in his trawler in search of lobster, abalone and sea bass to sell to the fish mongers for the morning market. He who caught from the sea was himself claimed, a trophy catch by the elements of his life to which his body surrendered unwillingly —perhaps due to a slip, a heart attack, a trip on his boat enough to send him reeling into the pull of the cold, black sea. And now, laid out with his sea-worthy clothing and rubber calve-length boots expelling their slugs of sea water on the dock, there perhaps mocked by his enemies, grieved by his friends, in his respite from all standing above him during his unpredicted ocean-side wake. One wonders, at moments like these, if there are silent cries of lost-being and dreams issuing from the corpse’s open mouth, if they recount sweet and harsh memories, if they might be food for a memoir that will never be.
Originally published in The Dream Angel Plays The Cello.
©2021 Stephen Anderson
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL