Getting Word

Getting Word:

To rid of, then, of the smell

of fish,

               

                (and I’m not

                ashamed but just disgusted of the way it’s suffered

                under the boiling

                oil) I’ve taken as many votives

                as I can muster and , lit

in every downstairs room, they come up dumb

as a dried tongue of river

stone, one that rubs up on bones

not entirely their own but claim it so once the milt

and spawn of the ocean we’ll all spill

into eventually is reckoned with.  They hold and hold and do

what they’re told on all these, froze

not full grown, never to be

full grown, backbones and remains of the hastily filleted.

                (mind the one bone not gone

                soft in the hot fat)

Yesterday and again

today the small lights are offering a sort

of homage, a kind way to elbow in

and touch a friend on her arm and say

I’m sorry for  your loss.  The grand plan

of what we thought would outlast us

has been cut up in chunks nonchalantly,

the way men take

to the great slick fins and

bodies of the stocks of cod or they quick flit unzip

the scallop of its halo and caul to lift out quick the little

                nugget of muscle—

                yes, yes, I’ll love it, I will, and I do, I love it, against the press

of my hand,

                all that shell and bone and tongue

                I do

                and I tell you if I could eat it all

                raw, if I could come out

                roses as they say

and not for the next month or more of days

stumble into the room after being

out fresh to have to succumb

to the warm heavy weight of cooling

and congealing grease and fish flesh I’m telling you I’m not

ashamed of where I come from

but the winding sheet of it sweet Jesus

yes the winding sheet of it           the way

                the tails trail and wick up mud

                and blood and squeezed through liver slick as any ice in winter

                I’d be, I would, I’d be

                rid of that goddamn it I would

                but listen

it’s nothing.  It’s nothing.  I don’t mean anything by it.  I’m here

I got here

as fast as I could once I got word.  I’m here,

fast as I could bring the fire

for the Christmas, clean as any fat, beeswax.

If Your Lids are Halfway Down the Sunrise Throbs. Try It Before you Go Blind

If Your Lids are Halfway Down the Sunrise

Absolutely Throbs.  Feel It Before You Go

Blind

“What vain weather-cocks we are!”        

                                                Emily Bronte

                                                Wuthering Heights

Maybe, if I look at it as though my heart were

beating in my irises, if I see without letting

or allowing myself blink, I'll be the in the breach 

of each thump

of blood going, each

thump of blood coming back, and at last

it will do to see, see! I'm really breathing, along the least 

of seams, the insanity of it, 

to be breathing, hum like a hammer-

struck thumb

before, you know the moment,

it goes into your mouth to cool the pool blue-all

tight as a trojan cinching the possibility

of new life.  In this moment it’s the sun just coming

up in front of the river, the lids

of my eyes go idle and lowly in the sense that they have nothing else

to do but stay halfway open without needing to

rush to be the maid who’s just come in late

for the morning, who’s dressing the table

with plates, who’s making eggs, who’s layering

the whites just right in the washer's drum.  Yes before all that, please,

I make myself

relax to the glaze, the wet, wet glaze just as

the salt's about to be slung.

Don’t you know all eyes have an atmosphere they see

through, breathing, taking the air like a consumptive

like the needy needing to lift

those lacy lungs until a choke hold

squeezes to know

anything: base, abusive, harmonious, erotic…

come let it what you want it

to see be seen breathing beating increasing

then slow as a pin-hole decreasing, easing out to such an edge

as unhanding is the next and only possible goodness

you can achieve.