Matthew A. Jonassaint

For Breakfast, a Sea Bream

Pieces of the red sea bream I carried in my belly across
A Tuesday gray before the day blinked, surprised.
The vastness of blue, the shocking after.
On my wall God had absolved with this morning: sizzled
Right up. I’d laid it there, in the pan, from the packed ice
It started the day on, in the market.
Its melting water dripped responsibility on my toes.
Now, fish flesh was gummed in my fingernails.
Silver-rose lattice as skin releasing.
Faintly the fin, nerved in the steam of it.
I absorbed these interweaving events as I examined the dark,
Cooked veins. I accepted all would be transformed, at last.

For now, my aunt has electricity again
Where she lives, these days alone, in Puerto Rico.
The neighbors applauded and cried she said.
My friends have given birth again, dear Marissa, old Torben,
And little Amelie. Their lives alight like a scented spyglass
With wet leaves of maple trees breaking free, rustling down
To ones in some mud already grounded from aspens, the high aspens,
Back door on my very childhood.

It was a day of good news,
Astonishing as on the end of my fork was that hot piece of white
Torn from wire for bone, or torn from the sea,
And no nautical chart shuddered so cold underwater as the map it made to me,
Trying to call back those friendly names I’d dreamed as I sat
In bed this morning, with sun shifted between the castle and port
To concentrate copper on the wall, and the bream
Not yet in me.

Matthew A. Jonassaint is from Utah, where he studied film history and has worked with at-risk youth. Locally published, his poetry has also appeared in glitterMOB. He is currently in Spain, working on a series called An American In Cádiz.