by Laurinda Lind
I’ve never been to Lake Murray
and I don’t know where it is,
maybe in the Adirondacks, maybe
in the Ozarks, I’ll Google it later,
but leather halibut might swim
there for all I know, or glass-
faced flounder, why not, Nicaragua
has freshwater sharks. Or plastic
pike. I found the words Lake Murray
on a slip of paper in a bookstore,
also halibut except that due to the
handwriting, halibut at first looked
like holiday and then hollow, and
I imagine some of those Lake
Murray holidays might seem
rather hollow if you came there
to fish and all you pulled up
from the water were ones
that looked like old shoes
and empty wineglasses, or
a wading-pool toy that would
be happy to chew your foot off
if only it were real. The shark.
Your foot would still be real. I
believe Lake Murray’s real, too.