After the stop-and-fix baths, my father enters the kitchen. In his hand, an eight-by-ten black-and white photo, dripping. He sticks it to the white refrigerator, the grays shimmering. A haddock, flung among the others on the dragger’s deck, a dark seam along the length of its belly as if a marker for the gutting knife. Its mouth thrust open, another fish’s head driven down its gullet. I’ve blotted out the night my father drove himself inside of me. I won’t blot out this fish, hauled through a mud cloud along the sea floor, hoisted up as good as dead, gleaming now.
Paula Finn’s poetry appears widely in journals. Her poems were featured in From the Fire, winner, 2011 Best New Musical Theater award, Edinburgh Fringe Festival.