Bait and Switch
by Joseph Quinn

all things surrender

in their manner

of grace

canvas, the tackle box,

remedies and place-names

browsing equipment

in the catalog of lures

summons

the slow horror

of that Carver story

when we saw

the boy, his claw

and sullen eyes

aiming at us from the basement

it’s a kind of treatment

that saturates the wound,

eliminates it

like water eliminates

feet wading in

his canvas pants

took water to the thighs

as he cast

and the river,

lapping at his waist,

explained at last

how silence operates

and how precisely God

and how his strange economy of cures

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