Looking for Salmon in the Wilson River at Tillamook State Park, Oregon

Abstract

Looking for Salmon in the Wilson River at Tillamook State Park, Oregon Matthew Minicucci (bio) Matthew Minicucci, poem, salmon, Tillamook, Oregon, chinook it runs, rabbit, static to a river in more than just bend or break a stake left grounded; static, again, station to station and you've left to see what rocks might lie beneath this brief break I can't blame you. I'm much the same way when water expels from the mouth just out of the lungs it sounds like bubbles from grammar-school water fountain; rusty; filled with holy blood. I'm hearing the fast, the new grass wind pushing along some song never sung without instruments. Footsteps perhaps, trying to stay out of this path of oncoming time. It all sounds the same but that's a lie. The truth is: lye, and by and by some other mouth opens. It isn't time for Chinook to push forward like a brief silver line, red. There's a single rock crashing instead, which doubles again; becomes, like all things, more of itself [End Page 60] Matthew Minicucci MATTHEW MINICUCCI is an award-winning author of three collections of poetry. His next, Dual, will be out in fall 2023 from Acre Books. His poems and essays have appeared in journals including the American Poetry Review, the Believer, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and the Southern Review. He is currently an assistant professor in the Blount Scholars Program at the University of Alabama. Copyright © 2022 University of North Carolina Wilmington