Maquereau

The fish electric blue in seersucker jacket peered leeringly above his shades
Spat voluminously
Snorted at the feathered hook
Hung potently
Too deep for the gannets
Too sharp for the anglers
Poised with lecherous acuity between prayer and predation
A sudden splash of water skiers
All legs and lost bikini tops
The speed boat carving an arc in his watery roof
Anglers hastily retrieving their worms
Fearful of awkward entanglements
‘Maquereau!’
The air thick with terms of icthyological endearment
The sea below resonating to the splutter and throb of greasy engines
Then still once more like a deserted bar beneath a brothel
More portent than potent
Importunate, infertile
Everything and everyone lost in vast emptiness
Punctuated, of a sudden, by the startled flash of a tail
As somewhere in the deep, the fish was gone.

(NB whilst ‘maquereau’ is French for mackerel it is also used colloquially to mean ‘pimp’ and as a general term of abuse)