Two Men Fishing for Drum
By Karyna McGlynn

The dark, almost tame
taste of the Gulf of Mexico
two men fish off the wooden pier
------------- Tejano from a transistor
quietly lights the silence between them
where the planks shift in slow complaint

outside the lamps’ repeating salt halos
it’s too late to buy a Christmas tree
too late to buy beer, the two men
-------------nurse the shallow bottom
of Budweiser tins—bait all wrong
a patrol car rolls to a squat on Oceanfront

phosphorous evanesces below
curls like ghost weeds around the pilings
a big drum circles their hooks
-------------slow in venerable spite
like a muffled heartbeat, out of sync
with the sudden outbreak of Feliz Navidad

they can almost touch the long pearled scars
along the fish mouth, can almost feel the club
on their own heads
------------and the slow death
within the breathless lung
of the white and empty ice-chest

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