Pluck Pluck, fiction by Catfish McDaris

After mak­ing friends with Maya on Face­book I fig­ured she wouldn’t mind a vis­it. I found out where she lived and jumped on a south­bound Grey­hound. The worst part was avoid­ing pee­ing on myself in the skin­ny bath­room while hit­ting pot­holes. When the dog arrived, I stopped at Popeye’s and got us a buck­et of crispy chick­en and the fix­ings. I rang her door­bell and a man that resem­bled a black Adolf Hitler answered, he wouldn’t let me enter until I gave him a thigh and neck bone from the fowl. When I saw the queen of poet­ry I smiled and gave her some fried okra with a pack­et of hot sauce. She looked me over from head to toe, her eyes seemed mag­net­ic. Final­ly she spoke. “I’ll bet you’re pure hell on the ladies.” I said, “I do alright.” She removed her draw­ers and said, “Let’s see what you can do you sil­ver-tongued dev­il.” I plunged in all the way to my ears, she start­ed moan­ing and groan­ing and car­ry­ing on. I got a bit fright­ened, I thought I was going to fuck­ing kill her. She start­ed whistling and pulling my hair out by the roots. I fig­ured she had enough. “God­damn. You sure got a lot of pluck for a naked neck roost­er scalawag.” I put my crotch in her face and asked, “Do you fetch bone?” “I’m too old to be your bitch, now give me the rest of that chick­en and get the hell out of here.” I hit the bricks back to the bus station.

Cat­fish McDaris has been active in the small press world for 25 years. He shot how­itzers 3 years in the army and used to fish and hunt as a boy in New Mex­i­co. Some­times he goes down to Lake Michi­gan and feeds seag­ulls and dreams of moun­tain hors­es. He’s work­ing in a wig shop in a high crime area of Milwaukee.