Of the fish in the Pine Bluff mall.
Of being fishbowled in the skylit
octagon of a rubber pond, the soft
give of the lily pads beneath
his hands and feet, the polished
echo of a hollow log. Most of all
he remembers the cool, dappled
surface of the fish’s mouth
against his palms, the quiet inside
the body. There are mushrooms
growing up through the floor
of his bedroom closet, and he is
being held back in the second grade
for failing to put spaces between
his words. Inherited our father’s
dyslexia, inherits worse and more.
He wakes up in a different house,
in a different time, never alone.
There are no mushrooms growing
out of the floor, but there is a racoon
in the kitchen, meth on the coffee table.
My brother looks down at his dirt-
blackened nails, at the water pooling
beneath the broken ceiling, and puts his
hands in until they turn to fins, until his
raw-picked skin scales and he can swim.