ALL RESPONSES |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Warm living rivers run through earthen bodies.
We drink their thickness, coating our lips in life.
Let’s pour a glass together, paint ourselves, bathe in its breath,
and lick ourselves to sleep with coated tongues, the taste finer
than skin’s final shudder.
Slice, bleed, lay with me on stained sheets
this last moment, our greatest,
and live. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Fish Heads
There’s a sight that turns the stomach--
bloody fish heads on ice, one
looks like Machiavelli; possibly,
the devil, for sure, someone evil.
Another seems to swoon, its whole
head pointed north toward heaven.
At least M. met his fair-square end
on earth. Most who die down here
discover there’s no heaven or hell.
(How do I know? --Instinct,
strong as stink from a fish bucket.)
The same rain falls over us all,
a psalm says, allowing the big
suckers to go scott free and the little
fish with their little transgressions
to be sizzled in a frying pan.
Scorched in an oven. Eaten,
useful to the end. We humans
get to lie at rest in a coffin. Or fly
through the air in ash, rejoining
the things on earth--prairie, forest,
lake, river, the great stream of life.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The dorsal fin of the white crappie
has six spines & this species prefers
slower-moving, often turbid, backwater
But here it doesn’t matter, you see, here
everything has been organized down
to the last several severed heads, bodies
waiting to be splayed, de-boned & filleted,
each glittering on ice, perfect blood labor
glazed in a movement of violent behavior
Ah!! fish oil of domestic transparency--
Take me to your black kettle |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Where is he now
as the rain falls heavy into my dreams
seeps into my words.
He’s the rumble of a train
the wing of a butterfly
circling around the hammock.
He's a lit match, a Fig Newton,
the crack of a bat and a basketball
hitting the backboard. He is smoke
and pheasant and night crawlers.
He is a bottle of Royal Crown Cola,
salted peanuts in the shell,
the half roll of Tums lying
next to the bathroom sink.
He's in the wind,
the wind that lifts and scatters
my thoughts like leaves
onto the ground to be raked away.
Into the river,
like dreams they float
between worlds.
He is a trout now
olive skinned and sleek
he slips past rocks, into shadow
where I lose him again.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Perplexed, by the nature of immobility; stunned…
I run my hands through doors I cannot open
There is a barrier in the thickness of these walls...
It burns like a thousand winter winds
It emerges as quietly as the first stars
It covers my world until it frames me
Immobile, frozen, in uncertain time
Raising my head
I look away and try to outrun it
Following a sequence of exhausting steps that will lead me out
Searching, for you, to put me to rest
You and the apparently infinite force you carry in your hands.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The English brought a lot with them,
a language crafted by grammarians
to separate the classes, libraries,
and carp because they liked the taste.
I can see those fish coming,
stuffed into freshwater filled crates.
Some say the English should have left them
in their own green rivers instead of whiskering
our glacial lakes with grey fish that create
a scurf of wrinkles hiding the real fish beneath.
Chuck says eating carp has nothing to do
with the chain of being.
He knows a fisherman who was angry
because he caught so many on Big Winnie.
He began to stab them and knifed his thigh
right to the bone. The men in the boat with him
laughed, said he got what he deserved.
This man grew up on the Range,
so tight he 's got the first dime he earned.
He'd never throw out dead carp, heard
somewhere they make good fertilizer,
so he buried them in his garden.
In late spring as he walked home from work
the smell from his yard ran to meet him.
His dog had dug up all the carp.
He got what he deserved, Chuck says again.
The Hmong boys fish below the Mississippi dam.
Carp jump onto their hooks. "Do you keep them?" I ask.
"They're good," one smiles, waving a stringer full.
The Hmong know how to fish, can out fish everyone.
Those whites that are trying to take away
the Indian's rights on Mille Lac don't want
the Hmong there either.
Those guys can't stand to be out fished.
says Chuck who can out fish, out story anyone.
There's a purposefulness to the carp's slow
swimming to meet the fishing lines of boys,
bringing with them a gleam of the fabulous
ready for immigrant tables.
There's a purposefulness to the mixing
of languages too, an occlusion outside
the grammarian's books, English with music,
licked black pelt of a storied river made new.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Long ago, in Berlin,
there lived an amiable fishmonger
named Franz Fritz Fitsch.
Down the block, he ran a little shop
where every Wednesday, I’d buy fresh
catch for my wife’s dinner.
Franz Fritz Fitsch was a quiet man,
whose advice, although seldom offered,
was always sensible and kind.
Look for the bloodiest,
Franz said, they taste best.
It means the fish fought back,
gave good struggle, not simply,
coasted along on a death line
slowly reeled in to land
in danger.
And he was right, each bloody fish
wrapped in newspaper I bought,
though sad in appearance,
graced my table divinely chosen
to be caught and gutted
in sacrifice to our master
stomachs.
So one day, Franz Fritz Fitsch
finished the rest of his theory.
Each fish, he said, smiling,
makes his own destiny
and the smart fish
that can tell the difference
between a bullshit line dangling bait
to make you into food
and a real crappy angling
to become your food
is the one who’ll never know
the piercing pain of hook
swollen in lip.
He was wrong.
When the Nazis came for my family,
it didn’t matter if we resisted,
we’d still have been snagged
up in their net.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Midweek already
time to draw deep
from Britt’s bait bucket
and cast about for treasured delicacies
schooling below.
How far should I throw my line?
How deep should I sink it?
Should I jig or troll?
What if I don’t feel the strike?
Or can’t set the hook?
What if I get snagged
among all the sunken debris?
So many doubts about
what I’ll pull from the water . . .
some fat-lipped, leather-skinned
whiskery bottom-feeder
or some sleek, delectable beauty?
You ask to see my catch.
“Go Fish,” I reply,
wondering if tomorrow
you’ll teach me how.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
this is a secret
place
this is black
water
black as
an iris
baited with
your heart
breath, kissing
water
your net, a bobber
moon
fishing the night
waiting
for your tug
weightless
and singing
eyes forever
open |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Exhausted sun lays to rest
Red resounds off tiny, scale mirrors
A day gliding over silky waves
Dragging temptations for souls below
Entranced by a shimmer, or
Thrashing out at a trespass
Misery silenced by a sharp blow
Lives – unwilling rest – what sacrifice
Fillets carved from bones and skin
Displayed on temporary crystal
Schools of humans meander by
Tastes of dinner on their mind
Shouts and chaos pollute the air
Dollars in exchange for pounds
A cycle, yet marking at end
Live laid to rest – energy for another
When the day rises up tomorrow
Again, this cycle scarred with an end
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I.
fish hangs wet on chain
link and flops
the boy jumps with fear
screams for father
fish flops from boy jumping, red water
drops and drips off the tail onto gray dirt
the boy can't bare the fish's
nefarious eyes that sit like polished stones
he pledges to chop off the head
so nightmares may end happily
fish fights
the boy for
minutes more and dies
in the shadow of his
forearms
II.
a rusty knife spotted with scales
is held in the boy's hand
the mean fish lies embalmed
twitches still from death departed
the boy holds the
knife as eyes hold a guillotine
waits until father is gone
then cuts
he laughs and cries
when the fish's
eyes stay open |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Perfectly done,
the flesh falls
into pink feathers
against my fork
and I think of
the fight,
the salmon
tangled in the net,
and I wonder what it is
that makes futility
so delicious. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
One night, when I was four years old,
an old man came to my window.
He showed me his bloodied axe,
and told me he was chopping off the heads
of anyone who didn’t leave their window open.
I always left mine up at night,
to cool off the room in the Georgia summer.
One day, my father bought an air conditioner
for my room, not so much for comfort,
but for my asthma. It felt good to stick
my face into its cool wind on a hot day.
The old man never returned,
but I still like to leave my window open. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Setting: Apartment / Cold. Parent is packing meager belongings. Child at table.
Parent: Hurry up and eat. The bus will be at Dawson’s at 9:00.
Child: The fish is cold. I’m cold. (beat) Will the bus be warm?
Parent: Yes. The bus will be warm.
Child: Tell me again where we are going.
Parent: I told you. We’re going to Mary’s.
Child: Why?
Parent: Because we need a place to stay. Mary said we could stay with her until next week.
(beat)
Child: Tell me again why we are leaving.
Parent: We’re poor.
(beat)
Child: Why?
Parent: I don’t know. We just are.
Child: Where are we going after next week?
Parent: Not sure yet.
Child: But why?
(beat)
Parent: Where is the dog?
Child: Black dog is gone.
Parent: Why?
Child: Not sure (beat beat) Maybe he’s poor. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
