Salmon Poem: two poems by Riley Richards
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Selling Plasma Two Days After Pascha
My emotions are going for the Stanley Cup
and I can feel the puck drop inside me,
feel the sticks scrape ice as the needle
sticks a new hole in my left median cubital vein.
Amber the Phlebotomist clocks
the icon bracelet on my wrist and whispers,
Christ is risen, grinning sweet salvation. I said, What?
my thoughts anywhere but the feast
and the resurrection, anywhere but the slow
pumping of my fist. The Beach Boys play
through ceiling speakers and dawn breaks
through high windows. Christ is risen!
She says it again like I had forgotten my own birthday.
My emotions cross the blue line. Rage
sits in the penalty box. I say, Indeed, he is risen,
and she is released to shuffle away, looking weightless.
I call my right eye Roy and my left Brodeur
so the net stays clear of pucks and tears—a glove save,
a wrist shot off the post: fear and grief with the one-timer.
I want to pray, but now is not the time to start.
Still, it seems like God singing in Brian Wilson’s voice,
If you knew how much I loved you, baby,
nothing could go wrong with you, and the machine
I am attached to cycles my red blood cells back to me.
~
Salmon Poem
Someday I’ll write a poem
about the homeostasis of salmon: the rigor
of their regulation of NaCl in the hypertonic
ocean, water flooding out of their bodies
towards denser solutes; then, the switch
as they enter freshwater where osmosis sets in,
H2O choking the gills’ epithelial cells
with empty moisture. Just imagine
that near fundamental pivot
of environmental interplay, the complexity
of simple fish living, same-natured and innate,
undaunted despite the chutzpah
of physiological rejiggering and counter-current
straining, that full-self lunge up and up and up.
…
But today is not that day. Today I sit middle
on my return flight, prim as a church pew, this flight
already redeye, rain-delayed 4 hours, chugging
against the wind. The man on my left is slack
like a marionette against my shoulder. I’ve been praying
the same prayer nonstop all weekend—
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
—fluctuating between mantra and plea, I repeat and shorten:
Jesus Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Christ have mercy on me
Jesus
Me, a sinner.
Mercy
Mercy
My only clear understanding of love
is my little mother at the airport; every time
she drops me off, she raises her hands
to fling and flail them overhead at the start of the line,
a parking lot air dancer whenever I glance her way
as I soldier through security. And she stays
long after the moment I’ve passed through: past
the bins and belts, past the unapologetic pat-downs,
and into the terminal’s wide mouth. My slow amble
to my gate, brought to mind again watching you walk
with your own mother down that silent hallway and out
into the purple dusk. You raised your hand
to her hair and touched it gently so as not to let her feel it.
…
After his lecture, after answering my salmon question,
the biologist said, Stay Curious, but I wished he’d said
Stay Humble or Stay Faithful or simply Stay
only his voice was your voice, and we were still
standing on those stone steps, my breath in your hands
and my hands empty. The primal recognition
of my homeostatic shift as your water rushed in—
The mirror of our hesitation: one afraid of fear,
one afraid of courage. Distance, and the up-current lunge.
____________________________________
Riley Richards taught Creative Writing and Political Writing at Uzhhorod National University in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, and is currently a PhD student at Florida State University. Riley’s work can be found in the Wigleaf Top 50, Fugue, The Journal, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere.
(August 2026 issue)
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