Fishhook / Anchor
Spencer Chang
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2023 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Traditional Verse
a haibun for my Grandpa
as you raise me onto the wooden deck, unlatching the fishhook from my shirt, I try to speak, but
cough up ugly noises instead. amid oceans heavy with summer smog, anything can be turned into
myth—you pull me close, cradling me like a fledgling fallen from its nest. I reach for my face only to
touch yours.
///
in a room cast still by thunderlight, I wake to a broken oar suspended above my head, the rugged bed.
look down at your feet & count each callus. from the altar, incense whirls around us a halo. yellowed
wallpaper unfurls from the ceiling, as if to listen, as if to speak.
///
from you, I learned how to pluck the bones from fishmeat, wring the salt from murmurous waves.
now, we're netting white carps from the sea, eyes gasping wide. I pocket a few to play soothsayer:
foretell the clawing storms, white teeth of currents. even then, there are things only the moon can
predict, you say, plucking chords from its rods of light.
///
things we find washed up by the shore: a needleless compass, plastic radios without antennas,
driftwood sawed off at the ends, to be part of something greater—this fishhook, my anchor.
///
on moonless nights, we watch boats illuminate black waters, rudders cleaving into wakes, as waves rush
in to sew. I imagine a healing like this.
///
you used to slow-dance in the living room, swaying to the ocean's pulse as waves crashed, carving a
little shore to keep for themselves—skin hardens like bark up your legs. a sparrow in oil, sinking
beneath its own feathers.
///
when I found you on the kitchen floor—skin sharpened into scales, neck knifed into gills—I filled
the bathtub with seawater & lifted you in. how much smaller you looked in the room. how much smaller I
looked next to you.
///
full moon turns the shores into mirrors, then silver, & I step into the waves one last time. water
rushing into my palms like a third hand, pulling you. the ocean whispers. I whisper back, this is a
second healing:
your hands reaching for
the moon & watch my hands,
unhooking from yours.
