Rough Fish

By Brandon Hansen

Shortlisted for the 2026 "London" Literary Awards in the International Poetry category

The bullhead’s strike is unmistakable. Little
brother of the catfish, its awkward
flop on the end of the line summons a sigh
and the slip of a knife from a pocket. Watch,
Dad would say. Like a woodworker
he'd draw a light cross in the skim of the skull
and punch the blade with a shattered-ice crunch
through the brain and into the warped
plywood of the boat’s center seat,
where my mother would be sitting
if she had the stomach.

I alone did, or so I was told,
but when my turn came with the set of my hook
both my hands shook on the handle
of the Bowie, long rusted
beneath the clothesline
‘til my bare foot dug it up.
I found things
the hard way, I guess. Like just how deep
my weakness ran when I struck
the whiskered fish and the blade
parried off the skull and the bullhead
went anything but still.

Blood like a driveway puddle, eyes
popped out to God.
​
No, Dad said. And he showed me
how you must strike through, how
like splitting wood or
breaking a heart the right thing to do
is picture yourself
smashing the thing
beneath the thing. 

---

​Brandon Hansen is from a village in northern Wisconsin. He studied writing along Lake Superior, and then trekked out to the mountains, where he earned his MFA as a Truman Capote scholar at the University of Montana. His work has been Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated, and can be found in The Baltimore Review, Quarterly West, Puerto Del Sol, and elsewhere.