By Christopher Stewart
-for Marie
The summer I worked on a longline boat
out of South Padre Island, we hooked
a stingray. As Terry cut off its tail,
the ray gave birth to eight pups.
They made swim-like motions on the deck
slicked with saltwater and beer. Terry
gathered them onto a cleaning board
and with the spine of a fishing knife
scraped them back into the sea.
To give them a fighting chance, he said.
Do you remember the letter I wrote
from a bar in Port Isabel? I said
we are stained by the sun’s witness
to our clumsy dominion, how we fumble
with knowing what we were born to.
I’m writing you again, across decades
shirring memories into dreams and dreams
into memories to say it was no small thing
to receive such testimony from a young man
on the brink of a life that turned that day.
That night, Terry filleted the ray’s wings for the crew.
I ate in silence, but I ate just the same.
Christopher Stewart is the author of What Came After (The Calliope Group) and co-author (with Quraysh Ali Lansana) of The Walmart Republic (Mongrel Empire Press). His poems have appeared in RHINO, Bellevue Literary Review, Plainsongs, Oberon, Connecticut River Review, Eastern Iowa Review, Atlanta Review, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the 2025 RHINO Poetry Founder’s Prize.
