VICTORIA LYNNE MCCOY

First Catch


What if I’m good at it? 
The hook and gut. 
 
The easy sleep. Can the animal in me kill 
the animal I will not eat? 
 
I’ve managed to keep my palms 
clean of god this long. Turned down

every sweet boy with a skeet gun.
If, by name, I’ve got a finger made

to place a ring on, is another fit to slip
around a trigger, slither down the middle 
 
of a knife’s cold spine? Today, I take the fish 
in a pair of hands that until now 
 
I recognized as mine, unhook metal 
from puncture wound, its fins bristling 
 
in my grip as life struggles out of it.  
I watch the thrashing thing fight the bucket 
 
until it is still. I can’t tell 
if something was lost in me or

uncovered the moment I knew I wouldn’t 
throw it back, the strange beauty, death

slow-dancing through its little fish organs. 
My love applauds me. Slices through the live bait 

with a thumbnail, takes my hands in his proudly,
even knowing what they’re capable of. 


 
116 The Paris-American

Victoria Lynne McCoy's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Best New Poets 2012, Boxcar Poetry Review, and PANK, among others. A Southern California native, she earned her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and currently works for Four Way Books in NYC. She is also a member of The louderARTS Project and is the poetry editor of Four Way Review. 

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   Next week's poet:

 Miriam Bird Greenberg