Grant Clauser

Grant Clauser works as a web writer and magazine editor in Hatfield, PA. Poems have appeared in various journals including The Literary Review, The Wisconsin Review, The Heartland Review, Lake Effect, The Schuylkill Valley Journal, Philadelphia Stories and the Painted Bride Quarterly. In 2010 he was named Montgomery County Poet Laureate, selected by Robert Bly.

The Catfish Nights

We sit on buckets, smoke old pipes
and check trot lines for loss of liver,

cheese, or gobs of blood with flour
and hog fat on the treble hooks

stretched across the river—
a force of weight, the catfish nailed

to tree trunks for skinning
by the fire, the talk of women

and work. A raccoon chews
a rotting carp by mistake.

Give the water something cruel
like night, a lantern rusted

in the bottom of a rotting boat
and the mist will find your feet

drying by a driftwood fire.
The easy weep of evening,

insects creeping like lichen
on the eastern side of trees,

the men want to dream long
as rivers, want to follow

the moonlight over rapids
to the wing dam where bass

corner minnows into such a panic
they throw sparks across the surface.