PRATIK's CURRENT ISSUE HIGHLIGHT : AMERICAN POET SEAN THOMAS DOUGHERTY'S NEW POEM, "Man Fishing"

 SEAN THOMAS DOUGHERTY

Man Fishing

 

Ink black shoreline, a cloud scribbled on blue slate,

and far out on Lake Erie I spy a boat, a shadow 

casts a line so far out from shore

I didn’t even notice when I took the picture.

It reminds me of those Chinese scrolls,

the one with the four mountains over eighteen feet long,

and then you read the title, so you squint

and in the foreground you find a hut and a man fishing.

Why should we care about this small figure?

When we are given the sky with its glorious sentences

of clouds, the mountain’s black lines sketched serene.

I want to ask Wu Zhen; does the man have a wife?

Are there other anglers asleep inside the hut?

I look down at the digital photograph I hold,

the slim stranger casting his line, the gulls swoop

and dive above the Cambodian men who smoke

and fish on the public pier, filling their white buckets

with perch and crappie. I bait my hook, ponder

how would Wu Zhen paint us if he were here to bear witness?

A few quick whisks from his wrist, and we would appear: 

 

a pier

of matchstick-

thin

old men—

 

 

Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author or editor of twenty books including Death Prefers the Minor Keys (forthcoming BOA Editions) and The Dead Are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press book contest. 

 

 

Now available on Amazon USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Netherlands and India

 

USA : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

UK : https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

CANADA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

GERMANY: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

NETHERLANDS: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

INDIA : https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp