Suzanne Verrall
god said I will make you fishers of men so of course we came in boats we brought all our good things tenacity hope our children our ability to play musical instruments really well to spell our ordinary intentions we didn’t expect to be greeted by guns looked at each other in dismay for a moment thought we’d taken a wrong turn thought maybe we’d gone in a great big circle which of course we hadn’t but now it was evident we had look we said there is no snake on board this person is very good at carpentry and here is a master dry climate gardener but the guns had no ears only voices and also to tell the truth we were made inaudible by our own screams so it was chaotic and terrible and a great big mess all round and entirely not how we hoped things would turn out they say drowning is peaceful like dying asleep in the arms of a lover you have no idea how much I want to believe this
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Suzanne Verrall lives in Adelaide, Australia. Her poetry, flash fiction, and essays appear in various publications, including The Interpreter’s House, Australian Poetry Journal, and the Southampton Review. For links to her work, go to http://www.suzanneverrall.com.