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From The Desk Of Frightened Rabbit: An Attempt At A Poem …

Frightened Rabbit bandleader Scott Hutchison knew that he was sinking into an abyss—mentally, emotionally, even spiritually—after the 2013 release of Pedestrian Verse, the Scottish group’s breakthrough album. But he couldn’t gauge the true depth of his situation until he began seeing his followers in a dreary new light. But the singer finally got help, from some rather unusual sources. All of which led to the fifth Frightened Rabbit epistle—the aptly dubbed Painting Of A Panic Attack, produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner. Hutchison and his bandmates—Grant Hutchison, Billy Kennedy, Andy Monaghan and Simon Liddell—will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature.

Fishing

Scott Hutchison:

I Don’t Fish
I’ve been saying it for years,
that I must go and friends reply
“You simply must”
But I don’t fish.
“You can get rods anywhere.”
they say. I say
“Can you get them at
Harry Ramsden’s?”
Nobody laughs at that one.
On paper it’s right up my street
or straight down my Mississippi.
In practise it’s too far,
too much fuss it seems
you can’t just do it with a stick
and some worms anymore.
You have to tempt the
slippery fuckers with
special feathers, do a dance
for them on the water
in those unwieldy waders.
The feathers are called all sorts:
Old Jeb’s Clatterback,
Wrinkled Scrotary,
Dead Worm Dancing.
Right up my Danube.
But still I don’t fish.
And ohhh how I eat them,
Scrape that flake off the bone
like a beast I’ll try the head
or the eye if I’m drunk.
Raw
I’ll think nothing of
when they were last
seen alive.
But still I don’t fish.
Ross offered to lend me a rod,
he’s got permits and
a nose for trout.
And I desperately want to
go, throw my phone downstream
along with everything else
I own and just wade in.
Every piece of bad plastic
each distracting circuit
all the new ways to tell time
and about fifty Bic lighters.
Wade in and stand,
pole in hand.
And wait all day for dinner.
But still I don’t fish.