Fate then, heavy in a boy's hand, 
hoists dead weight to a nail on a tree.
His knife scores firm flesh yielding
beneath freshly limp gills - there is 
an instrument made just for this, 
pincher-pliers for catfish skin - 
he grips and tears, uses his weight 
down-stripping smoothly bare to such 
luscence little ribs of roseate flesh. 

Only the overly large head, the ugly face, 
whiskered within gilded monstrance, 
remain pure to form, thin-lipped and 
mocking, restrained by depth pressures, 
sustained on surface trash, dead things 
that sink down, it's treasures.

Tenderly he sings then to a nail 
a blood catechism of hands and 
mind meant to be stained, mercy's 
quality unstrained neither by will 
nor gill. Scavenging flocks gladly 
fill their gullets inhaling entrails 
tossed in supplicant bins.

2
In unison Gregorian*** they scream: 

There is a nail for us
plain, a chorus of barks**, 

splintered lips
punctuated surprise, 

glossolalia of rivers
now given weight.

We can only will
praise to The End, 

and spill, post-pliers, 
our silken guts in offering.


**A catfish when brought to shore barks, a rasping, barking discharge of air. 

***Gregorian chant - church music sung as a single vocal line in free rhythm and a restricted scale (plainsong), in a style developed for the medieval Latin liturgy and is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic, unaccompanied sacred song of the western Roman Catholic Church. Gregorian chant developed mainly in western and central Europe during the 9th and 10th centuries.  Tradition holds that Pope Gregory invented the chant thus it is named for him.