TWO POEMS by RACHEL REH
Where the Sun Shines
Through the mangroves, through the palms,
through the palmettos—big and heavy as jewels,
drinking up the damp air with their dark bodies—
through the lonely stretch of alligator alley
slowly bleaching white and
battering down on the cocoons of algae and moss,
where an egret pokes around, eyeing you eyeing it—
yes, to the sliver of marsh molded around the asphalt,
where the Everglades was holding her breath, as if she had any breath left,
as if the whole state wasn’t sliding like whipped cream off hot pie into the Atlantic.
Past the buckling limestone houses, swollen and mildewed,
under the barnacled boardwalk where catfish flit
above Yuengling bottles and brown plastic bags next to the super fund,
where someone asks if you’re from around here
when they’re not.
On the cattails and sawgrass. During construction and the rain.
On the fruit man while he stands with his hat and dip,
selling watermelons from the truck bed.
On the girls drawing sunscreen hearts on their thighs,
snapping disappearing photos.
On the peeling Jeep, Y100 blaring through the cloth roof.
On the Italian ices bleeding on the sidewalk
and the stray lapping up the remains.
No, it spares no one—
The heat. The longing. The languishing.
Lake Lines
The first time I hooked something, a writhing
peacock bass, I cried
until my father let it free.
Call it empathy, call it girlhood;
seeing its mouth impaled made me clamp mine shut
and rub my cheek, wondering how it felt
to be stabbed and suffocated,
one wet eye bulging to bear witness.
To think, all that suffering in our backyard.
To think, that was my brother’s Sunday ritual,
making pincushions out of catfish.
It is the root of something sinister and cliché,
and I wanted to be part of it, even as I felt
memory write me out of the scene.
All these subdivisions with their little ribbons of blue,
acting as makeshift moats between the condos and the golf courses.
This calms the male mind: protect, obfuscate, use.
I’ve seen them out there at dawn, playing angler. They perch
on the edge of the canal where the thick film of algae meets grass,
casting lines over and over again in a rote grace.
Come, it says, look at how we provide: suiting up for the hunt
in our bucket hats and tackle boxes, plucking
from this lake we paid someone to fill with fish—
not for dinner, but for our own amusement.
Rachel Reh (she/her) is a writer and communications professional living in Washington, DC. She has been a featured reader for The Inner Loop and a participant of the Jenny McKean Moore writing workshop. You may find her work at rachelreh.com and her babbling on Twitter @rachelreh.