Anya Ziring

Wishing Fishing

Tonight I’m going wishing fishing off

the deep end

of the pool,

my future unspooling quick and

forthrightly out

to you.

I’m pulling out my eyelashes and

blowing them to sea,

its surface

rippling and reflecting your blue eyes back

through mine.

I’m wishing

you sucking syrup from my lips,

red filigree between

your teeth.

Wishing your arms, a man’s arms

winding ropelike ‘round

my body,

binding us together in a sailor’s knot.

Wishing us writhing

like eels

intertwined beneath the waves.

Before I go out

on the water

tonight I’m wishing on a fishhook.

Anya Ziring is a writer, poetess, and flâneuse living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work is often born

from an almost masochistic fascination with the human body’s sensory faculties. She is the co-founder

and editor-in-chief of Selfish Magazine, a Twin Cities-based independent literary journal with an

emphasis on absurdity and indulgence.