Poetry

Salmon Said Surrender

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jap,’ he spits, long after the surprise attack.

The armless man, his sleeve pinned back, perhaps

a veteran, surprises back

at Robert Wholey’s fish market in Pittsburgh – Jap:

A word like these to wrap in wax as she, my mother,

in her worried accent cries, ‘Reeve head, preeze.’

The meat in cheeks

a delicacy. The eyes. The incense of the headless left

long after the beheading.

Sa-mon,’ she cries

over the scaling, a passport to the headless in their brine.

The yellow tuna begging on its ice. The frenzied scaling.

The buckets over-run with blues. The gutted monk. Lust

of capture. ‘And reeve head, preeze.’

She sniffs, pretends she doesn’t hear the word

Surrender thinly sliced,

served with ginger over rice.

 

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