Dani Sandal
My Father Talks Sex While I Gut Fish
on riverbanks, yielding from first autumn storm.
Our footing solid, sunk deep in red clay turned mud.
It's like this, he says Your mother would tell you as much,
if she were around. Reeling in space I am twelve,
possessed by daydreams of becoming boy reaching
some admirable height Bamboo rod bends, pulls line taut.
It's like this, he struggles, cusses wicked under whiskey-
sweet breath. One foot in water, another wet on river's edge.
It's like this: When they say they love you, they really want
in your knickers. Hurls me rainbow, swollen of egg.
I slice soft underbelly with crimson-tipped six-blade.
Cup jelly-soft amber, glowing, thin-veined and warm
with fading life. But I love you, he says, looks into his
silver-scaled palms. Figuring some way back,
he says, Christ. Runs thumb down the spine
blood of his trout. Empties womb of gems,
tossing them to break mirrored waters as their own
rise to swallow them like air.
Dani Sandal is the past recipient of The Heritage Award in Fiction (GMU) and the Text and Community Award in Fiction for blue collar prose (Virginia). She is the former fiction editor for So To Speak and Rough Copy. You can read her work, forthcoming or in, the Raleigh Review, Adirondack Review, PANK, Stirring, and Phoebe.
Return to November 2012 Edition
on riverbanks, yielding from first autumn storm.
Our footing solid, sunk deep in red clay turned mud.
It's like this, he says Your mother would tell you as much,
if she were around. Reeling in space I am twelve,
possessed by daydreams of becoming boy reaching
some admirable height Bamboo rod bends, pulls line taut.
It's like this, he struggles, cusses wicked under whiskey-
sweet breath. One foot in water, another wet on river's edge.
It's like this: When they say they love you, they really want
in your knickers. Hurls me rainbow, swollen of egg.
I slice soft underbelly with crimson-tipped six-blade.
Cup jelly-soft amber, glowing, thin-veined and warm
with fading life. But I love you, he says, looks into his
silver-scaled palms. Figuring some way back,
he says, Christ. Runs thumb down the spine
blood of his trout. Empties womb of gems,
tossing them to break mirrored waters as their own
rise to swallow them like air.
Dani Sandal is the past recipient of The Heritage Award in Fiction (GMU) and the Text and Community Award in Fiction for blue collar prose (Virginia). She is the former fiction editor for So To Speak and Rough Copy. You can read her work, forthcoming or in, the Raleigh Review, Adirondack Review, PANK, Stirring, and Phoebe.
Return to November 2012 Edition