Breath & Shadow
Winter 2025 - Vol. 22, Issue 1
"The Gar"
written by
Charlene Pierce
The fish barely fit in Dad’s twelve-pack cooler.
It looked alien mad.
The long, skinny mouth snapped a thousand razor-sharp teeth
at anything that moved.
We all stood still, gathered around the cooler in the dirt,
watching the slow silver breathing.
I don’t know what we expected.
Dad dumped the cooler
just like he would if it was half-melted ice
into a hole under the roses that vined
a few pickets of our backyard fence.
Said it couldn’t be eaten, only good for fertilizer.
The vines grew, and the roses bloomed
button-sized yellow breaths, thick with thorns.
Charlene Pierce founded the nonprofit Nebraska Poetry Society with the not-so-secret mission to get everyone hooked on poetry. Her work has been published in "Misbehaving Nebraskans," "805 Lit, Quarter(ly)," "The Good Life Review, which was nominated for “Best of the Net,” and others. She is a Copyeditor for "Raleigh Review" and published "The Poet's Journal: A Beginner's Workbook for Writing Poetry." She is in the Pacific University MFA program and a freelance writer.
Find out more at her website!