Stormfront Tim Craven

Do you still have the blood dot on the white of your eye, Brother? A memento of a summer spent fishing tench (tiny, delicate, silver-green) out of the flooded quarry. The bait: a bucket of worms and a tin of broken biscuits. Keeping score as we stuffed the keepnet.

Our imagined life as survivors, living off bushmeat and breadfruit, instead of the thick jam sandwiches that Mother stowed in the tackle box.

The stillness of the water, the panic of a bite, the returning calm, the vapour trails from a airplane ploughing the sky, a drift of sleep, the pineal gland in control, the shape of a tiny pinecone from an age when anatomy was figurative. When the hook caught your eye from my wayward cast, you howled, then silent shock. The line sagged between us, the neon green feather resting on your cheek. I held my breath to unhook the tear in your sclera, my fingers foul with fish innards. Then the full on roundhousing, haymaking, great arcing swings of retribution that junked up my face. When a stormfront blows through, my jaw still throbs.

Mariko Nagai