How merciless

the sharp-tongued
fisherman’s knife

schooling
the wide-eyed mackerel—

Humble /
the plate /
for you /
fool /

Only /
salmon /
board /
fat /
ships /
like /
his /

slicing /

into me

—

Darrell Petska worked more than 30 years as an editor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before academia he worked as a psychiatric tech/caseworker and nursing home evaluator. His poetry has appeared in Otoliths, About Place Journal, Lummox, The Missing Slate, Blast Furnace, The New Verse News and elsewhere.