The Women Who Clean Fish

The women who clean fish are all named Rose
or Grace.  They wake up close to the water,
damp and dreamy beneath white sheets,
thinking of white beaches.

It is always humid where they work.
Under plastic aprons, their breasts
foam and bubble.  They wear old clothes
because the smell will never go.

On the floor, chlorine.
On the window, dry streams left by gulls.
When tourists come to watch them
working over belts of cod and hake,
they don't look up.

They stand above the gutter.  When the belt starts
they pack the bodies in, ten per box,
their tales crisscrossed as if in sacrament.
The dead fish fall compliantly.

It is the iridescent scales that stick,
clinging to cheek and wrist,
lighting up hours later in a dark room.

The packers say they feel orange spawn
between their fingers, the smell of themselves
more like salt than peach.

Tenderness

Last night the animals 
beneath her window 
crept out of hiding 
to comb the dirt 
from each other's fur.

Rising to watch, 
she discovered the lilacs 
lit from below by ivory vinca. 
The street on the other side 
of the trees continued 
to contain its passing cars; 
tenderly her teeth 
let her tongue rest 
against their curving backs.

Tonight when she lies 
in bed again, 
she will remember 
the one kind thing 
her grown daughter said today 
after weeks of scrutiny,

and the moment at work 
just now, when a stack 
of Day-Glo folders 
cascaded over her desk, 
thrilling the white cubicle
with their descent.

Vision

With age   
mirage
assuages
what the youthful eye  
would have studied
until identified—
chicory? bluebird? debris?  
Today no nomenclature
ruptures
the composure
of a chalk-blue haze
pausing, even dawdling,
now and then trembling
over what I'm going to call
fresh water.