Fishflies, by Mike Finley

Fishflies

They probably have some other name where you are,
These clouds of angels ululating in the heat.
Harmless as flying shrimp, they neither bite nor itch
Yet they fill the heated sky with their bent translucent twigs,
Ecstatic to be together for a day before they die,
The endless day that extracts everything from them,
As if life were only about them and their rollicking hour in the sun.
They mass at your screen door like a theater on fire
Turned back by a locked emergency exit, they perish in your car grill
Bodies packed so deep that the fan blade
Scarcely cranks against the clog, and
Robustly constructed spider webs collapse from the weight
Of so much happiness. They are an army of Egyptians
Spun down in chariots to the sea floor,
They are the Superbowl crowd with the bomb in the stadium ticking,
They are the communion of saints strewing palms
In the path of the new king proclaimed.
They are put in play not for any reason that benefits them
But because God made a covenant with the pickerel and gar
Saying the sign to my chosen will be the feast I visit upon you
In the first week of August, last days of July,
Eat this candy that I scatter on the waters
Till your gills no longer pulse and your stomach wants to split.
And so it will go, fish eating fly and man broiling fish
In a coating of garlic and crumb, each species imagining itself special
Like a chain of being leading straightway to heaven.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• fishflies
• mayfly
• fishermen
• walleye
• poem
• mike finley
• Red Sea
• Superbowl
• Nazis
• Manson
• lap-dance
• teabag
• Lady Gaga

[violetwrites]

good voice over