What We Preserve
- What We Preserve
The Boy's Guide to Taxidermy was stuck open to the pages on eyes: that's what my brother could never get right. He crammed slices of crayon or cherry pits into the scratchy holes instead of marble replicas.
He tried to learn with perch and panfish. Cleaned them in the basement washroom, filled the tub for my mother's bras with entrails washed from twigged cavities.
He wanted to preserve the color of a pumpkinseed bluegill, opal-skinned even on days when it rained—the shallow lake water so pock-marked it almost shattered into hoops.
He wanted to freeze them in motion—their little tug on the line, crystal-ring mouths pulling the crumb of leech away from the jig.
Dad kept the mounted fish in his office for years. They slowly dusted into dead things, but he liked seeing what his son took from the lake, what was carried home through the lip on a stringer. [End Page 56]
Rebecca Olson studied creative writing at UW-Madison and holds an MFA in poetry from Oregon State University. The former editor of CALYX, she now lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been published in PANK and Word Riot.
