Blue Mary, and: Catfish Seasons

Blue Mary

after The Madonna of Humility by Fra Angelico

“Not blue from a camera,” my dad said. “They mixed it.Pickaxed and ground up stones called lapis lazuli.”

So Fra Angelico could paint a waterfall over her head,around her knees. And paint blue robes on little

angels holding up gold cloth behind her.Dad says it’s real gold paint. Not that Mary’s real.

Her fingers are like a paper doll’s. No fingernails.My mother’s knuckles keep her ring stuck.

Mary’s hands cross on her chest like, “Oh my,” and she’snot even touching her own baby. He’s a tiny grownup

floating over Mary’s lap. Not like Raphael’s babyon another page, with chunky thighs and Mary’s hands

around his bum and definitely a boy. They’re playingoutside on a blanket, fields around, like people do.

Edith, my friend, likes Fra Angelico Mary’s halo.She said, “If you’re really a virgin, you have one.”

She said, “Jesus’ halo means fruit of her wound.He got some on the cross so we can go to heaven.”

My family doesn’t go to her St. Agnes Church.I like Fra Angelico’s Mary because she’s blue, like sky

you drown in when it clears after a blizzard suffocatesthe cattle and you’re on your back, carving up wings.

Catfish Seasons

Only Goodyear tires in our river.Then here’s this thing in an old man’s pail.Naked skin, a big mouth sucking. Head flatas my mother’s trowel.Eight needles out the snout, two big onesout the sides. Nightmare cat.

At twenty below the river stops.My mother says a girl dissolved through crackingice, so my sister and I sneak from the moviewith our skates before the second feature.Practice our spread eagles in the moonlight with a fishturning and turning under us. Can catfish seeour runners flash? Hear splintering at our stops?

In May we find a bamboo rod down in our basementand a net to keep away whiskers.Every Saturday we’re snagging tires. And then it grabsthe worm. We pull it up, watching the snoutand flop it in the dishpan.

My mother gets the hammer, pops the head.She says, “You can’t cook whiskers.”Hands me pruning shears. I suck my breath in andpretend it’s lilac bushes. Snap. One stump.Suck in. It’s star magnolias. Snap. Another stump.Catfish is gone.My mother slits it throat to tail andmud, stones, snails, a bottle cap pour out.