Tuesday poem #513 : Childhood Memory : Kōan Brink

 

 

The fish are on the boards now,
ready to be cut up,
                     imprinted and shaped
onto plates.
We bend over the scales and take the flesh 

to our mouths,
                    separating out the bones,
the parts we don’t need with our teeth. 

Learning to prepare things
for ourselves. 

 

 

 

 

 

Kōan Brink [photo credit: Ryan Paradiso] was born and raised in Minnesota. They are a poet, lay ordained Zen student, bookmaker and teacher. Brink is the author of a poetry chapbook, The End of Lake Superior (above/ground, 2021) and a forthcoming artist's book, What Sleeps under Lacquer (NECK Press). They currently live in Austin, Texas, where they are on the faculty of the Austin Waldorf School.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan