Jessica Lee McMillan

Poetry, Essays, and Music

[
[
[

Gillnet

GILLNETnowhere to break away on the boat, my smoke snuck out the porthole above the toilet, rereading his juvie devotions on legal yellow a battle of temperatures, the hull was warm in the muddy Fraser, ice hold tepid with fish, lunch on red ring cloud seemed to boil opening week when we took the biggest catch lacerated bodies splayed slick on the deck, bashed to the side over waves in the bath, unscrubbable scales sheathed my legs in a tail of refraction mesh the same that snags gill filament to rob breath fish oiled every inhale, every paper bill, overpowering perfume counters at the mall to score Doc Martens and lipstick, land sick, I threw up in the garbage I thought of the way one salmon looked when I put her back in the current too late
by Jessica Lee McMillan. Photo by Uriel SC on Unsplash. Originally published by Humber Literary Review, 2023.

Discover more from Jessica Lee McMillan

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading