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.
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