Two weeks before the tourist season starts,
the lake is suddenly crowded with dead carp.
A virus, experts say, as thousands of fish float
through the waves. Bloated bodies cling
to the banks, eyes bulge, slip from their sockets,
a thin film of pus and skin coats the surface.
Fins and gills and lily pads lap the shores,
turn shallow waters into graveyards.
Every morning the neighbor’s daughter,
a thin stick of a girl everyone said wasn’t quite right,
wades in, pushes pennies into the mouths
of the carp, thrusts them towards the undertow.
To pay the boatman, she says to anyone
who will listen. For weeks, I look for something
willing to ferry the dead. Sometimes I see
a blue heron looking lost in the thick water.
More often I spot river rats, eyes twitching, wise.
[Previously published in Lake Effect, 2010]
Karen J. Weyant's poems have been published in Crab Orchard Review, Harpur Palate, New Plains Review, Poetry East, Rattle and River Styx. The author of two poetry chapbooks, her first full-length collection, Avoiding the Rapture, was published by Riot in Your Throat Press last year. She lives, reads, and writes in northern Pennsylvania.