in the beginning, there was a river and
an old man in a rowboat fishing
the hazel water for coins and feathers and things
and there was you,
in the silt, all twisted up in soda rings
with the hook burrowed deep in the red flesh of your foot.
so he dragged you out; you sprawled on the stones
where the first green things had begun to grow
and the old man put down his fishing pole
and dragged his rotting boat
underground
Clarissa Grunwald is a librarian at Elizabethtown College. She has previously been published in Jet Fuel Review and Drunk Monkeys. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys playing viola and pen & paper RPGs.