Grandfather and Grandson Bank Fish at Archie

Poem by Cody Smith

Artwork by Clinton Van Inman

                                                for J. Neal

Downhill from the T-Towne gas station

we fish Little River. Last night you dug

Coke jugs from trashcans, filled them with water,

and sat them in the freezer. We sip at them

now as the long morning sun surfs

the wakes made by aluminum-hulled boats

passing. We came to fish white perch,

but the stripped bass are biting. Chartreuse rubber

threads tied into a ball, a dollop of chrome

on a swivel churning. Our Walmart Zebco reels thud

our palms. From your pants pocket you pull

a threadbare dishtowel, dip it into melting ice water

in the red and white cooler we use for a seat,

and with it you cover your burning neck. Nearly every cast

gets a bite. By God, you holler when I set another hook.

A man fumbles a pickup backwards down the ramp.

He wets the boat with river, tells his boy to go

hold the rope so the boat doesn’t drift in tide

water while he parks the truck. By God, you holler

again. The boy turns, surveys me reeling

another one in, looks on as you crawl the bank

and reach in warm water to find the line, watches you

pull out the hook and drop the fish into the cooler,

dip your rag in again. By God, boy, you tell me,

smiling. Over the levee eighteen-wheelers whirl

there last few miles home, while in your chest

your heart massages the blood lapping your body

on its own power for nearly the last time.

Cody Smith sojourned his way from Louisiana to the Washington state where he's an MFA candidate at the Inland Northwest Center for Writers. A southerner, homesickness for bayous, sea level, and Tony Chachere's finds its way into his work. 

Clinton Van Inman grew up in North Carolina, graduated from San Diego State University in 1977, taught in South Carolina and is currently a high school teacher in Tampa Bay where he lives in Sun City Center, Florida with his wife, Elba.