#mark roper

Mackerel

line no sooner down than taut     shadow silvering into air desperate fruit all wriggle     and twitch snapped off slapped in a plastic crate     fading to layers of leaves knives out guts chucked     to an instant coven of gulls heads scarfed whole     sea a boil of snatch and scream fillets home in a bucket     fried in their own oil all night my head full     of saltwater skin sun flesh feather beak bone     so little between us

Mark Roper

Dolphins

They slip through the surface below the cliff, two adults and a child, rolling and folding their longed-for lengths.

We watch with two minds this vison of fin framed in all we now think of as loss.

Already they seem belated, shadows of former selves, apparitions rising from ruin.

Foam flares from their breaking backs like words erased as soon as they’re uttered.

They rise and fall, as if trying to mend the water. The sea, in their wake, appears to heal.

Mark Roper