Christine Cuccio Radlmann
The ghost of a bench
sits at the pond around the corner.
A memorial bench
dedicated to a man
who once caught twenty-two fish in a single day
at the southeast bank.
His hands, tough as baseball mitts, somehow
gently removed every hook,
caressed each sunfish,
and released them—all twenty-two
swimming safely away.
A bench engraved with the same name
he’d carved with his pocketknife
into the wooden dock at the bay.
A bench where I’d sit with my kids
and tell them stories
about the miraculous fisherman
who had baseball mitts for hands.
The idea of the bench
is all that remains
after certain memories of those big hands
came to light,
how those hands were anything
but gentle
to the unlucky ones.
I still fish there,
and sometimes I can see
a wisp
of a dream
of a bench
where I’ll never sit with my children.
Christine Cuccio Radlmann received her MA in writing from Emerson College. Her poetry has been featured in such journals as the North American Review, the New York Quarterly, the Carolina Quarterly, and Valparaiso Review. She currently resides in New Jersey with her husband and children and is working on her first book-length collection of poetry.