Francine Witte

THE MAN, NOT LIKE THE FISH

Couldn’t swim. Went down a third, gurgly time. The water, not like his bedquilt at home, was freezing and didn’t know him. The wife, not like the trees, ran towards the water, her screamy arms waving, not like the branches that were brittle and snap. The hole in the rowboat, not like the hole in their marriage which was gaping and constant, was covered by a mat of wet leaves. Their argument moments before and him rowing solo to the middle of the lake, was sudden, not like the seep of water that soaked his foot, the boat dropping out from under him. The fish, not like the man whose eyes were bulging now fishlike, had nothing but the water to hold him up.

Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, Passages North, and many others. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press), The Way,of the Wind (AdHoc fiction), The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books). Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ September, 2021. She lives in NYC. Full Profile

Francine Witte’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Mid-American Review, and Passages North. Her latest books are Dressed All Wrong for This (Blue Light Press,) The Way of the Wind (AdHoc fiction,) and The Theory of Flesh (Kelsay Books.) Her chapbook, The Cake, The Smoke, The Moon (flash fiction) will be published by ELJ September, 2021. She is flash fiction editor for Flash Boulevard and The South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in NYC.

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