Cleaning Fish On Good Friday 1963 Poem by Warren Falcon

Fate, then, heavy in a boy's hand,
hoists dead weight to a nail on a tree.
His knife scores firm flesh yielding
beneath freshly limp gills - there is
an instrument made just for this,
pincher-pliers for catfish skin -
he grips and tears, uses his weight,
down-stripping smoothly bare to
lucent ribs of roseate flesh.

Only the overly large head, the ugly face
whiskered within rust bucket monstrance
remain pure to form, thin-lipped and
mocking, restrained by depth pressures,
sustained on surface trash, dead things
that sink down, it's treasures.

Sing, then, to a nail, to a boy's blood
catechism, hands, mind, meant to be
stained, mercy's quality strained neither
by will nor gill. Scavenging flocks gladly
fill their gullets inhaling entrails tossed
into supplicant bins.

In unison Gregorian they scream:

There is a nail for us
plain, a chorus of barks**,

splintered lips
punctuated surprise,

glossolalia of rivers
now given weight.

We can only will
praise to 'The End',

and spill, post-pliers,
our silken guts in offering.


**A catfish when brought to shore barks, a rasping, barking discharge of air.