Book Review: Sleeping With The Fish by Catfish McDaris

Catfish is slick; his writings are a dirty, but beautiful rainbow ring on the asphalt that you stop and smile at, as the raindrops plummet to the ground and try to wash the oil away unsuccessfully.
Sleeping With the Fish, is new and collected works from the man who has been writing poetry and prose for over twenty years now; it contains so many of his raw and mischievous adventures alongside his amigo Quick.

“As her fine ass retreated
I poured gas all over my body
And waited for lightning.”

These final lines in the poem “The Ass That Wouldn’t Quit” (below, along with another poem from the collection) are received with a slow clap and a standing ovation from the crowd of old and new Catfish McDaris fans that I picture in my mind, as we progress through the book together. I love it. They love it. You’ll love it. This is one collection that will not disappoint. It’s that motherfucking good. And it is available now!
McDaris Cover
The Ass That Wouldn’t Quit
Her ass was fire
Her ass was the sun, the moon, a Tyrannosaurus Rex
Her ass laughed and cried
It could make brave men cowards
It could start wars
It could make rich men beggars
It could make saints into sinners
It could turn water into whiskey
It could make the rain come down
When she walked through the Louvre
It turned the Mona Lisa into The Scream.
Her ass was of biblical proportions
Her ass started playing kazoo, but soon
Mastered all wind required instruments
Including the slide trombone
Her ass made lions and bears roar with hunger
It was the Queen of Sheba doing the Twist
Cleopatra in her prime walking like an Egyptian
Marilyn Monroe in a sheer white dress
All the beauty that Paul Gauguin captured in Tahiti
The marlin that Santiago lost to the sharks
Babe Ruth’s grand slam over center field
Her ass was Elvis Presley’s blue suede shoes
Jimi Hendrix’s guitar from Woodstock
It was Steve McQueen’s motorcycle
From The Great Escape
A winning Powerball lottery ticket
The Hope diamond
It was all the words from Pablo Neruda,
Li Po, Tu Fu, and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War
A saber tooth tiger, a killer bee, a Spanish fly
A zillion tarantulas crawling up the
Leaning Tower of Pisa
Her ass was the Great Pyramid at Giza,
Chichen Itza, the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge
Her ass was the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders
Naked doing cheers on the Great Wall of China
As her fine ass retreated
I poured gas all over my body
And waited for lightning.

***

The One Eared Dutchman
Jocko’s hands shook like a
half jerked off dog shitting
razor blades, rot gut was his
Poison, he’d spill more nectar
than reached his foul gullet, he
used a bar rag or shirttail to
sponge and squeeze his elixir
Down his parched gizzard, the
crack skeezer slouched against
him, looking for crumbs in an
empty eight ball dream
She used to have a walk that
screamed and whispered, I like
to fuck, long ago Jocko would
listen and turn into Van Gogh’s ear
A douche bag freak tried to gank
his pile of change and steal his buzz,
a cue stick sang, it was like killing
flies with a sledgehammer
Jocko headed for the beach, the
woman said, good I don’t want your
damn pity, he laid in the warm sand
until a mermaid took him home.

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