ARCH MADE OF CODFISH — LINDA NEMEC FOSTER
/—This Piece was awarded Third Place in the 2015 Micro-Fiction Contest—
A guy lives in a small dot on the map. To ease the boredom, he likes to make ridiculous claims about love: how it’s responsible for global warming and the subsequent demise of the polar bear. To stay consistent to his train of thought, he compares the affection he has for his wife to the act of loving a carp, a codfish, or a clam. The metaphor is filled with bottom feeders: from the green-brown carp with its fleshy whiskers; to the dull red cod and its FDA-approved liver oil; to the burrowing gray foot of the two-faced clam. Is that any way to love a wife? To keep bragging about the never-ending seafood buffet? Imagine him in cumbersome waders, trying to reel in enough fish to construct an arch, a bridge, a convenience store, a town. “Look, look,” he says to the wife in equal tones of excitement and disbelief. “All this silver losing itself in the dry sun. Just for you."
Linda Nemec Foster is a poet and writer who has published nine collections of poetry including the award-winning books Amber Necklace from Gdansk (LSU Press) and Talking Diamonds (New Issues Press). Her poems have also appeared in such magazines and journals as The Georgia Review, Nimrod, New American Writing, and North American Review. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has received awards from ArtServe Michigan, the Arts Foundation of Michigan, the National Writer's Voice, and the Academy of American Poets. From 2003-05, she was selected to serve as Grand Rapids' first Poet Laureate. Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College and currently is a member of the Series' programming committee.
