Jackie Wills
The Island of Curious Fisherman
Over shots of red wine, supper of baguette
and mussels, the fishermen are curious
about visitors who occupy their island’s
only rentable cottage. Its long picuture window
is a cinema screen, advertising a table, crowded
with artichokes, Muscadet, a box of camembert
from Normandy. Tonight, two young women,
two men, sit by the fire topless, playing cards.
The women are warming their breasts.
When they look out of the window
they don’t see fishermen staring in,
hear breakers bank at the cliffs, they see
themselves, against the dark. A storm
brings the fishermen to look, while the men
stroke the women’s shoulders, and they take
on colours of the fire, as if they could set light
to anything they come near. The fishermen,
though, own the sea, the night. They can pull
the sky down to cover them. They can drop a net
down to catch anything. Women and fire.
and mussels, the fishermen are curious
about visitors who occupy their island’s
only rentable cottage. Its long picuture window
is a cinema screen, advertising a table, crowded
with artichokes, Muscadet, a box of camembert
from Normandy. Tonight, two young women,
two men, sit by the fire topless, playing cards.
The women are warming their breasts.
When they look out of the window
they don’t see fishermen staring in,
hear breakers bank at the cliffs, they see
themselves, against the dark. A storm
brings the fishermen to look, while the men
stroke the women’s shoulders, and they take
on colours of the fire, as if they could set light
to anything they come near. The fishermen,
though, own the sea, the night. They can pull
the sky down to cover them. They can drop a net
down to catch anything. Women and fire.
Page(s) 53
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