Mackerel, and: Maid Poem #2

MACKEREL

Today was mackerel, nets full of them. Silver as christmas thistle, their fins a foil origami in the sea.

Down in the market, bronzed women sell bits of shell, Prices hand-scrawled on cardboard with charcoal with chalk.

In the bars where only Spanish is spoken, There is talk of the new cannery.

The subject of the season thrills the oldest women. Remembering when they were little, they gather and giggle.

Some are missing teeth, others have silver crowns. They have shouldered strong children.

The women sit, eat, and wipe bread crumbs from the table with the backs of their broad forearms onto their laps and onto the floor for no one to clean up.

A woman walks in with a wooden box of shelling beans. They are large pods, gray-green, flatter than favas.

Behind the women, in an empty kitchen, a pot of salted water boils. salt the water see how it tastes like the ocean

Between my hands, I toy with a cup empty for half an afternoon. The plate of beans is brought to the table:

Steaming, whole, without labor. Tonight is mackerel. Cold potatoes. Squat glasses of purple wine.

See how they eat the beans. See how they peel the pods back.

MAID POEM #2

We were shown how to eat with our hands, how to pick the meat between bones, how to feel for the small slivers hidden in fish, how to gather food with four fingers and push it into our mouths with our thumbs.

There were no knives at our table, those were kept in the back kitchen, with the maids. They ate when we ate. They stayed back when we went to church, to tend to the chickens, to care for the youngest, always sick.

We knew their names, the smell of their skin. Shame I can’t name them now. My mother remembers them all and each, which maid was paired with which child and which one (only one) would come with us when we went to the mountain to ride horses in the fog.