My brothers once showed me the bounty that could be had in bait nets  / we were able to catch garfish  /  bills like half-baked marlin  /  the rounded quill with a fluorescent orange head; pencil fish, that’s what the old diggers called them, and yes, how we had to pen our stories well to con the bait shops into a sale  /  the confusion in the net  /  fish all crossing each other  /  locked in panic  /  bodies woven to create a multitude of silver letters  / many X’s . . . T’s . . . J’s . . . C’s  /  mouths popping, nitrogen starved O’s  how a young summer whiting, tail flared, once looked the perfect Y  /  an eel, the picture of a feverish S  /  we’d pour everything onto the recycled paper surface of Donnybrook’s brown sand  /  the catch a moving paragraph  /  a funeral notice maybe?  / punctuated with the black spots of toadfish / the harpoon of a nervous stingray an exclamation mark / edited before the deadline of a sunset tide . . .