And Her Soul Out Of Nothing

The River Twists Like Lake Shore Drive

The River Twists Like Lake Shore Drive Like that guy from Chicago who wanted to know if the Kuskokwim was fresh water or salt. Like those sex-crazed fish, drunk on water, racing into my taut taut net strung out across the river. Like their iridescent scales still littering the river's floor. The way they suck your skin, the way they stick to you, the way they know: you were once a fish and now you're drunk on air because that's how you feel, that's how foreign: this is the way we will eat and sleep and talk. Even real people play it. Inuit Adam and Eve probably played it. Alaska is not far enough. Once my friends were pulling me under and I had to swim for my life. Once I looked good standing there. No one could see the inside of my head. Once I had a plan, once I saw myself as more than myself, as more than just a fish. And just last week the chant of an Eskimo woman old and ugly and fat with the world: you can always get another man ... you can always get another man ... The task of it, what I loved was the physical task of it: pulling in something whole and alive and glittering, something weighty and silvery and slick. 39 ...