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Caught by Chris Bullard

November 19, 2024
Reading Time: 1 Minutes

Fishing off the causeway

I reeled in a frogfish,

mottled and bizarre,

croaking as it struggled for air.

 

My Dad snapped a photo

while I held it at length away,

hooked by the mouth on a line

like a clapper without a bell.

 

More ugliness was down

there than I had supposed.

I thought of leaving it to die,

but I brought it again to the water.

 

In dreams, where images

close like on-coming traffic,

it reappears, as big as a head,

gulping at me with recognition.

 

It knows I followed its example:

fixing myself in place,

camouflaged so not to be found,

snatching what floated by.

 

Now, at last, I’ve been pulled up.

 

Awake in my sick bed,

I blink against the daylight,

feeling the hook inside.

 

Old lungs puffing like gills,

I beg to be thrown back

to boyhood’s clear waters.

No one shows me such mercy.

 

Free VersePoetry
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Poetry  / The Weekly

Bullard, Chris
A native of Jacksonville, Florida, Chris Bullard is a retired judge who lives in Philadelphia. In 2022, Main Street Rag published his chapbook, Florida Man, and Moonstone Press published his chapbook, The Rainclouds of y. Finishing Line Press has accepted his chapbook, Lungs, for publication in 2024. He was nominated this year for the Pushcart Prize.

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    • The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
      February 25, 2025
    • Caught by Chris Bullard
      November 19, 2024
    • Second Winter Solstice During an Epidemic by Marianne...
      September 26, 2024
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      September 17, 2024
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