Voices from the fringes: We want to be fish now

I think I first heard about the writer and poet Saeed Jones when I literally heard him being interviewed on NPR. Growing up Black and gay in suburban Texas has clearly given him things to write about, and he’s a powerful and articulate writer. His 2019 memoir is titled How We Fight for our Lives; his debut poetry collection is titled Prelude to Bruise. Those two facts kind of give you an idea.

The poem I’ve selected for today’s National Poetry Month post is from that collection. It’s one of Jones’s more straightforward pieces, if perhaps wistfully fanciful. But it also makes me consider what the brilliant Daedalus' life might have been like after his son's death. Did he wander around beaches muttering to himself and wishing for Icarus to return?

“Daedalus, After Icarus”

Boys begin to gather around the man like seagulls.
He ignores them entirely, but they follow him
from one end of the beach to the other.
Their footprints burn holes in the sand.
It’s quite a sight, a strange parade:
a man with a pair of wings strapped to his arms
followed by a flock of rowdy boys.
Some squawk and flap their bony limbs.
Others try to leap now and then, stumbling
as the sand tugs at their feet. One boy pretends to fly
in a circle around the man, cawing in his face.

We don’t know his name or why he walks
along our beach, talking to the wind.
To say nothing of those wings. A woman yells
to her son, Ask him if he’ll make me a pair.
Maybe I’ll finally leave your father.
He answers our cackles with a sudden stop,
turns, and runs toward the water.
The children jump into the waves after him.
Over the sound of their thrashes and giggles,
we hear a boy say, We don’t want wings.
We want to be fish now.