Assistant Editor Lisa Low: Danni Quintos’s “Milkfish” begins with the simplicity of a mother’s pregnancy craving for milkfish. From there, the poem unfolds into a dreamy sequence of images, guided by a kid logic that acknowledges both the fantasies and the dangers of the sea. As the poem circles back to milkfish, Quintos’s sharply observant young speaker asks us to rethink the connections between family, bodily experience, and the natural world.
To hear Danni read her poem, click below:
Milkfish
if your mother craves milkfish when she’s pregnant with you & if
the sea stops putting their gaping mouths on your father’s hook, & if
your father begs the sea for more, he will owe the salt water something. you,
black haired & seven years old, will be swallowed by a wave. forget
your best friends or the chapter book you haven’t finished. forget the freckled
neck of the boy you stare at during english class & sometimes during mass.
forget, too, your mother’s warm hands on your shoulders before she braids
your hair into ropes, her ensaymadas sprinkled with cheese & sugar. your feet
won’t fit in any pair of sandal or sneaker, you’ll feel those bones splay, soft
as straw. maybe you imagine this underwater life as glint & dazzle, scallop-shell
bikinis, bottlenose dolphins, & pearls plentiful as fish eggs. instead,
the seaweed strangles you in sleep, plastic six-pack rings handcuff your wrists,
& all the skeletons of smaller fish tangle in your hair like ugly combs. cola cans
are the only sparkle, twisting their bodies into blades in the sand. when the moon
is a white circle, your feet will come back. walk to your old house where
your father disappears into a quiet nothing & find your mother still cooking
milkfish. milkfish: stuffed & baked, fried in oil, pickled in vinegar & garlic,
bodies not unlike your own.
Danni Quintos is a Kentuckian and an Affrilachian Poet. She received her MFA from Indiana University. Her work has appeared in Day One, Best New Poets 2015, Salon, Cream City Review, and elsewhere. Danni is the author of PYTHON (Argus House, 2017), an ekphrastic chapbook featuring photography by her sister, Shelli Quintos.
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