The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Owen Boynton

Fishing

The Blue throbbed on the deck
beneath your thick palm it’s all muscle
how it flailed then frisked then motioned like dead
always eyes agape and deep throating the hook
hold it down hard feel its fibered terse
life pressed on the fiberglass in scales and blood
and once it’s stopped long enough for you to try your luck
yanking its head by the three-pronged lore
playing xylophone on its bone ridged larynx
(if fish even have that) its gills with flesh
curdled in maroon spillage
it starts to pulse again its body entirely.
Plopped free in the ocean’s diaphanous green
it’s snared only by instincts; after a heave it descends.

Owen Boynton was born in 1983 and has lived in the USA and Switzerland. He graduated from the International School of Geneva in 2001 and and is presently a junior at Brown University, located in Providence RI, where he is concentrating his studies on Comparative Literature.