Willard Hornpout

Sometimes driving home from work I pull over 
at Willard Pond and skip a stone or two out past 
the lily pads as cars belch black exhaust across 
the bridge and I remember my mother always 
told me no matter what be back by supper. 
To which I’d peel off on my Huffy three-speed 
with a can full of fresh-dug wrigglers, my father’s 
old Zebco rod and reel. The spot below the bridge 
belonged to me and my friends, as far as we were 
concerned, and we could cast right up to sunset. 
One time I loaded a stringer with large hornpout, 
mouths gaping, fat bellies the color of rich cream, 
like at the top of the milkman’s bottles. Sky nearly 
dark, I pedaled home, anticipating a dozen pink 
filets dipped in cornmeal, sizzled golden, but 
my father stopped me in the driveway, explaining 
how people could get poisoned eating things
from those murky waters, how sundry chemicals 
and sludge flowed in from the tannery upstream.
We’d have to bury my catch later in the woods. 
That night would be meatloaf and canned peas. 
A meal for a growing boy, he said. Please your 
mother, ask for seconds. And I did. I even said 
it was my favorite, though my friends ate plenty
of Willard hornpout and seemed just fine back then.

RICHARD JORDAN

Richard Jordan’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Cider Press Review, Connecticut River Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, Gargoyle Magazine, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, The Squannacook at Dawn, won first place in the 2023 Poetry Box Chapbook Contest.