Fish Boy
They seize it from the wooden house at dusk.
Their grand pigment
shoving at darker skin. Body-bound and fettered in tarpaulin.
Pubescent sweat and urine pooling in the bed
of the corroded pick-up. Under a shadow-blanket, they
batter its coffee cheekbones with steely pistols;
tear the left sleek-sphere from its gaping socket;
wrap a barbed cable around its burning throat.
Shoot the nigger above its right ear and cast
it out into the brook.
The good men find it,
scab-legs emerging from the serpentine river at dawn;
loose-skin, cheeks overlapping onto puckered lips;
meaty veins protruding from the socket like stems.
A silver ring on its index finger.
A gift from
Mother.
Anniston, AL
Grampy said: you were a
boy
until you were an uncle.
Grampy said: you were a
nigger
until you were dead.
Jason Guisao was born in the village of Floral Park, New York. He writes fiction—and poetry, when he doesn’t feel like undertaking ten-page-long projects. His idols include Raymond Carver, Ray Bradbury, and Cormac McCarthy. He considers himself best friends with Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men because deep down, Jason wants to be an assassin and a never-before-seen force of evil.
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