We had been talking about how clear the water was, waist-deep
and deeply satisfied to be inside my Great Lake as if I were heir
to the water, my swimsuit girded on for the long haul, my slick-
backed, seaweed hair. We were talking about how to handle the days
as if they were a set of blocks that could be laid in a puzzle or path
or stacked like a set of stairs when I saw the fish. Squeamish
of minnows and just born things with microscopic tails or any
nearness to ducks or gulls—but this fish was large, silhouette-
black, like a traced figure on a tavern sign or an iron monster
in a 19th century book. Just a shadow moving away, trout-solid,
solo, like a submarine. Was it a fish or the shadow of a fish. We swim
as if alone at the beach, don’t open our eyes underwater. What
did it mean passing by with its double-hooked tail, its tail like
a crescent moon affixed the wrong way. What would he make
of our very white legs, those dubious water-lit columns of a city
that shifts oblique. What is meant by the fish and who means it,
its darkness, its torpedo-bellied aim. An impossible fish, its tail like
a weight and an anchor. Antonym of this shallow series of bars and flats.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 26, Issue 4.
Susan Grimm has been published in Sugar House Review, The Cincinnati Review, South Dakota Review, and Field. She has had two chapbooks published. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, a full-length collection. In 2022, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.
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