Head Off & Split: Poems

Liberty Street Seafood

85 Liberty Street Seafood I stand in line. Behind me the hungry stretch & wiggle out the door. Sterling cake bowls nestle in ice: mullet striped bass whiskered cat rock shrimp steel porgies blue crab “No eel ’til Christmas” mother mussels flat-face flounder sleeping snapper whiting one sea turtle (lazy fisherman). In his fishmonger-owner apron Randy is white, round as a blowfish, conducting this orchestra of desire. Members: the cut boys and the lined up, who come every day and wait in between frozen ice and hot oil. The cut boys are well suited in fish scale and high up on risers above us. They sing out with their knives. Stationed inside tiny cutting booths slashing this throat and that. Fish tune. Veritas: Those who are exquisite at beheading always occupy a throne. One has a giant Afro. Another’s hair is finely braided backward, like flattened rows of corn. The half-straight ends of his thick black wool curl up his neck like one large fin. The last one has shaved and greased his head for duty. Old men who sit around, outside the front door, tease. Early on they named him, Dolphin. He is playful, jumpy, slick, far more endangered than the other two. All three wear the heavy rubber smocks of men who use their 86 hands to kill (& feed). All three hold knives longer than their johnsons. For now, they are safe. The wet wood engulfs them from the waist down. Cleaned fish: their handiwork will soon be on display at ninety-six dinner tables, Southside. We pass the time by lying: How you do? Fine. Alabaster fish scales streak & dot their hair like Mardi Gras keepsakes. Fish petals float into the wet air. Black. Indian. Zulu. Sequined, smelly, bloody scales settle across three sets of brown hands, arms, in muscle shirts. Scales thick as white evening gloves. The cut boys turn each fish over like one-eyed fabric dolls. One has his Mama Helene’s eyelashes. He is the jittery dolphin on the loose. A hand-me-down Afro pick sits in No. 2’s back pocket. This one with a tail always on his neck has a fist always on his comb, circa 1975, belonging to his brother, thrown under the jail, up under in upstate Connecticut. Cause: a bad fight about a chica gone jugular. These cut boys, shine jewel & scale, stationed before a wall of black & silver ways & means. Eastern Star daughters and North Star slaves stare out at the hungry through their notched eyes. They whisper and laugh, loving how we wait on them. Three Black boys in hip hop haute couture, in suits of bloody, rubber smocks, standing side by side, making 87 three dollars an hour, beheading and detailing fish. Their long knives whacking pine all day. Fish eyes roll. So Friday is made. The white man reaches for the money, faces the hungry, his back fully turned, their knives just above his head. ...