Kerry James Evans
Artificial Light

Sundown sees off the neighborhood.
Kids scatter like lizards into scuffed-up homes
for fish stick dinners, then the streetlamp
shudders like a gong and soaks the living room with a cackling,
incessant light. I pull the drapes, yet the light persists.

I close the door, hang a blanket
over the window, call the city, pray to Almighty,
then, finally, surrender, and set everything back as it was.
Light feathers through on dust motes that end
at a bookshelf where a gavel leans

on its head like a fallen giant-
an oak Goliath slayed by the unforgiving rays
of a suburban lantern we'll call David,
who God would not permit to build the Temple.
Bush burning atop Mount Moriah, Ark of the Covenant,

and the Exodus out of Egypt,
then the call of trumpets-the rumble of the furnace
coming to life from the basement below:
Thou shalt not have any other gods before me.
Then what am I to make of this synthetic light?

        1
We caught nothing until our oyster boat filled with water,
tiger shark circling, then Kent
pulled out a hand pump with a busted hose
and yelled, Bilge, dammit! So I bilged.
He grabbed a bucket,
scooping water over the side,
my cell ringing from a backpack, wife upset
for us staying out late-again.

Always fish to clean,
this never-ending reeling, this windburn,
my waking from a dream, where I kneel
at the base of a clover hillside
far beyond this swampland
stinking after low tide.


        2
I never answered the phone,
but the tragedy is

heroes aren't allowed
to sink with their boats.


        3
There are stories
we fall into;

there is brackish water
filling the boat,

and there are always sharks
circling, but the grass

floats across sandbars,
and with it, the speckled trout,

the red fish, and schools
of shad seeking refuge.


        4
If you can love someone, do it.
Do it plainly.
Do it without thinking.


        5
I cleaned the house yesterday.
Tied garbage bags with square knots, then lifted
the dumpster lid and tossed them in,
dusted baseboards, ceiling fans,
the wire around the light bulb
and the lampshade itself. Folded laundry
like I worked at J.C. Penney. Folded
and was proud of my good work, then looked
in the bathroom mirror at the streaks
caused by my carelessness. I grabbed the newspaper, squirted
Windex, and didn't stop until those streaks were reflections.
When I finished, I bathed in a clean tub,
then dried off with a clean towel, then unfolded
clean clothes from a dusted dresser.
After dressing, I looked into that streak-free
mirror at what I had done for myself
and was proud. Next, the dishes.


        6
Early in our marriage, I threatened divorce, even packed bags.
When I walked out of the house, the gardenias
blooming in April, my wife came home,

saw the bags at the door-I had come back inside-
and asked, Where the hell do you think you're going?
I said, Goodwill, then sat mute in the stairwell for a year.


        7
There are still fish I haven't caught, songs
I will never hear, and in one of the many towns

where I grew up, a spring-fed well
runs into a stream off the side of the road.

Locals stop to fill up milk jugs,
then pop on the plastic cap, hurry home.

There is the promise of water I will never taste.
But beyond this well is a groundswell

building offshore, and the memory
is a constant reeling, hooked redfish fighting

to the net, thunderhead crouched over us.
I pull up, then reel down. I pull up gently,

then reel down, trying not to lose it, and
the whole of it, the entire periphery of the bay

is content in the sea's offering of this fish.
Do you understand? Do you understand this silence?

*

That night, my wife
left work an hour early,
and we prayed

before she put knife
to whetstone,
bringing the blade

back and forth like the baton
of a conductor standing
over a pit of eager musicians.

She then gutted the belly
and fileted the fish,
rib by bloody rib.