By Cindy King
Issue 78
I remember the last time I had fish.
It was at a waterfront restaurant
with my mother decades ago.
I ordered a cocktail.
My mother brought her own—
a pharmacological rainbow
she shook from what looked to me
like a little plastic coffin.
It was a Saturday or Sunday
when the fish was placed before me,
and when I ran my knife down
the silver length of its body,
it opened its mouth.
Sit up straight, I heard it say,
and elbows off the table—
my mother is a fish now, like
the one in the Faulkner novel.
You are what you eat, they say.
I have become a vegetarian
instead of becoming my mother.