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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