Beasts and Violins

Now That the Brown Pelicans Have Flown Elsewhere

78 Now That the Brown Pelicans Have Flown Elsewhere it’s another season teaching children how to hunt freshwater clams with their feet and losing my best jewelry to the lake. I have come to admit Alaska will never be a future, just an escape. That Great Northern Pike would’ve taken half my fingers if I hadn’t let it swim. The women here only trouble my sleep. I dream they live alone in my house, while I watch them from outside the window on all fours. Still, they wear negligees like they expect me, leave jars of milk aging unchecked on the counter. I would like to remain on the delta smelling forever what seals have killed. I would also like very much to stop poisoning their best meats. When it’s evening and the nets are in and the cafes fill with conversation I am not privy to, I think on how things might have come out if the dog hadn’t warned me of that black bull standing sideways on the highway, with its color just another section of night, and me powering toward it dumb as he but with no horns. 79 I might never have gotten to taste that bucket of restaurant-ready pickles my best friend got on the cheap after his boss forgot to have them arrive pre-sliced. They were the only food in the fridge for weeks, and we fished deep into that brine during darts and after drinking. They were all we ate, all we could hold. All the same it made our hands cold to feel for the bottom that way. Just like Brown Pelicans off course and their barnacled posts, wandering in a region more brutal than they are built for, with their pouches hauling ice cannonballs and their feathers useless for camouflage. ...