The dark waters teem with catfish. You might catch one by casting a line and letting it flow downstream, the hook tumbling with the current, hoping one gifts you with a bite before the spool reaches its conclusion. This is the manifest of our destiny: to sponge water from the mountains and cut scars into the golden earth, to pick mouths from among the thirsty while others parch like summer grass. If you dove down into the bottom, you would find the skeletal frames of cars, shopping carts, weights with strands of fraying rope, a mosh pit of catfish with swollen bellies. Come, the setting sun beckons, cast: there will always be dead on which to feast. — MATTHEW J. ANDREWS
Matthew J. Andrews is a private investigator and writer. The Iowa poet is the author of the chapbook I Close My Eyes and I Almost Remember, and his poetry has appeared in Rust + Moth, Pithead Chapel, and EcoTheo Review, among others. He can be contacted at matthewjandrews.com.