Peter Markus: The Fish and the Not Fish

First there is the fish and then there is the not fish. The not fish is the fish that used to be. This fish used to live and swim and eat and be a fish in a lake but now the not fish sits in a pan that is hot steel on a stove and it sits here in a pool of lard and the not fish turns brown on one side and then it is turned from side to side so that it does not burn to black. When the not fish is done, the not fish is placed on a plate and the plate is placed on the lap of the man who fished first the fish and now the not fish up and out of the lake. It is like this that the man eats. Like this the man who fished the fish up and out of the lake he eats the not fish slow. His eyes close as he eats and eats with his mouth and his tongue and teeth and his lips slick with lard and not fish. When his eyes close he can’t help but see the not fish turn back to be the fish that it first was when it was a fish that lived and swam and ate and made like a fish makes like when it is a fish that is a fish that you can’t see when it is a fish hid down in the blue that is the blue of the lake. The lake when he sees it like this with this fish hid down in it, it is blue. The sky when he sees the lake like this with the fish down in it, it too is of a kind of blue but it is not the same kind of a blue as is the blue that is the lake. This man in his boat, it is a boat that is a not blue. It is, this boat with this man up in it, it is of a shade that is a dull kind of gray and is made out of a steel that will one day turn to rust. Now, this man, here in his house and not in his boat, this man, he licks at his lips which are slick with the not fish fried in lard. The not fish tastes as good as a fish tastes when a big fish takes a small fish in and eats it with its fish mouth. He eats the not fish down to where the not fish goes to when a man like this forks it up to where his mouth is a hole in his face that he puts food down in. When he is done and the not fish is not on the plate in his lap but is down now in the pit of his gut, he gets up and wipes off this plate that is slick and wet with not fish and lard and then he puts it, the plate, back to where its place is up there where it sits on its shelf. The plate will sit there, up on its shelf, till the next day when more not fish fried crisp and hard in lard will be placed on this same plate so that he can place it on his lap and eat the fish that is now the not fish. Once he eats it, this fish that is now the not fish, now the man can in the not lit night of his house go to his place to fall to sleep at. He sits in his chair and in it like this he, this man, he sinks down low and then like this he sleeps. He dreams, like this, of first the fish and then he dreams of the not fish. When he dreams like this first of the fish, of the fish that is in the lake, it is like this, when he sees it like this, it is a fish that can sing. It can sing, this fish, and it sings its song up out of the lake up to the man who sits like this up on his house that is a boat. The sound that this song makes, it makes the man lean out of his boat so that he can look down to see a stone that floats in the blue that is the blue that is the lake. The man with his right hand takes hold of this stone and when he does it turns from what it was, a stone, a stone that floats, to be not a stone no more but a star from the black of the sky and then from a star this not stone that floats, it turns and it is, in his man hand, not a stone or a star but it is like this a fish. It too is a fish that can sing. Its song is a sound that lulls the man to be with sleep. He sleeps. When he sleeps like this, when he leans out of his boat like this, this man, he falls out of his boat and ends up when he wakes up not a man in the lake but he is now a man in a house who sits in a chair that squeaks when he stands up to get up and go from this place that is just a short walk down to where the lake is blue in the day and black when it is the lake at night. When it is night no more, this man, he stands up in the day’s first light and he gets up and goes from where this house is back down to where the lake is where there are fish that he will fish up to be the fish that are in his boat. These fish fished up to be fish in his boat will soon be not fish once he takes them up in his hands and takes a knife up in his right hand and a fish up in his left hand and when he guts the guts from these fish and once he cuts the heads off of these fish and when he fries these fish up hard in a pan made out of steel with its skin burnt black and slicked wet with lard, this is when the fish are fish no more but are the fish that are known as the not fish.

We called him Bird since that’s what, to us, he looked like to us: a bird. Nose bent at the tip to make like a beak. Eyes like two black seeds, too small, it seemed like to us, for him to see with. But Bird could see, it turned out, what the rest of us could not.

Bird.

It’s what he was.

Bird liked to sit up in trees. Perched up there just like what he looked like to us: a bird.

Where’s Bird? we’d ask.

We’d look left and right. Then lift our eyes up. There Bird would be, up, up, in some tree’s top.

Bird.

Bird, we’d say. We’d ask him to tell us, What’s it look like from up there?

Bird would look down. Then look back up. The sky is blue by day, Bird would tell us.

At night the sky turns black.

That was Bird’s song.

Then Bird would say down to us, Come up and come see.

But the trees that Bird climbed up, they were too tall for boys like to us, us boys who did not look like birds, to climb our way up to.

These trees were big trees. These big trees did not have limbs down low for us to grab hold of and for us to make our way up.

The trunks of these big trees were too big for us to hug them with our arms. That’s how big these trees were to us.

The bark of these trees, we liked to rip off chunks and chew them in our mouths.

We’d spit out what was left.

We ate what we could not spit out.

Bird, like the bird that he was, liked to eat worms. He said, when we asked him what did worms taste like, Bird said to us, Dirt.

We liked dirt too.

We liked mud.

We were boys.

But we did not like to eat it.

There were these one boys in our town who liked to eat mud, but they were not one of us.

One day Bird built a nest way up in some tree. This nest, it was made out of twigs and dirt and mud. Bird sat up in this nest like a bird would sleep and eat and live in a nest just like this.

Bird would not come down from up in this tree.

He would not look down when we called up to him his name.

Bird stayed up in this nest for three straight days.

And then it rained.

Then Bird stayed up there in his nest in this rain and he did not come down.

Bird would not come down.

Bird had a house and had lived in a house just like all the rest of us.

Bird’s house was a house made out of wood and brick. He lived in it with a mom and a dad who weren’t Bird’s mom and dad but were the mom and dad of a boy with a last name that was not the same last name as Bird’s.