Published in Overland Issue 227 Winter 2017 · Uncategorized Faulkner Cassandra Atherton My mother is a fish. I have buried her three times already, but the water table is high and she floats to the surface. I cleaned her, using scissors to cut anteriorly through the bones attached to her pelvic fins, but I can’t cross the river while her cloudy eyes are directed at the sky. The tackle box is full of the rusty hooks of untried catches. I take a pitted sinker and use the fishing line to weigh down her fleshy isthmus. There is water in my shoes but I can feel the stones rise beneath my feet. Image: Fly fishing tackle box next to stream / Chesapeake Bay Program Read the rest of Overland 227 If you enjoyed this poem, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Cassandra Atherton Cassandra Atherton is an award-winning poet and the poetry editor for Westerly. She has been a Harvard Visiting Scholar, and a Visiting Fellow at Sophia University, Tokyo. Cassandra has published eight books, most recently the three-volume Sketch Notes. She has a Creative Victoria grant to write a prose poetry graphic novel on the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. More by Cassandra Atherton › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 5 June 20265 June 2026 · Friday Fiction Hobo portraits: Treadly Tim & the falling star Patrick Holland We crossed the half-buried railway line and the crazy man known as Treadly Tim turned a corner around the van park on Simeon Street and came toward us on his Malvern Star bicycle. 3 June 20263 June 2026 · Reviews The past in the object: Vanessa Berry’s Calendar Courtney Powell In her latest book, Calendar, Vanessa Berry explores the relationships that are formed between people and material culture, both fleeting and sentimental, and how they can come to represent us.
