Hiser Beach
The line cut first,
then, before I began to bleed,
the gills with their edges like steel and glass
flared, and I opened my palms and dropped
the lingcod I had struggled so long to bring
out of the darkness, this passage, this rite,
you yelled something and held it down
with your foot while you took a hammer from your belt
and swung against the skull until
the eyes bulged, broke free, one returned
to the sea and one remained on the sand
while I sucked my hand and did not want
any part of this thing we had done.
Song
“The dignity of death is here”
—Joaquin Miller
Time has changed, but California
is still the best place to die
—in September, when the hills are sheets
of gold on ancient, unmade beds
and Spanish moss hangs from the pines
like tassels of fog, sun-dried and stiff
(tassels of fog or souls? Perhaps
the Esselen, who left their mortars
and acorn meal at the Spanish cross,
and every canyon a burning rash
of poison oak, and the buzzard’s eye
—the best dying place, near the raw coast,
abalone dust, sardine scales, ladders of kelp,
the clown-faced otters with their big dog teeth
afloat like angels on the world’s edge
while white gulls scream and cry for God
to wash up, bleached, bloated, soft,
bones like Chinese jade, fists
delicately clenched like anemones,
while in cemeteries, silent deer
puncture the earth with their perfect hooves…
and freeways, yes, and celebrities
—Eastwood, Schwarzenegger, the dusty crossroads
at Cholame where James Dean died
(Cholame: population 5,
sunk on the toes of the Temblor mountains
and the vicious, patient San Andreas),
because all California is a fault,
a rubbing-raw of spirit and flesh,
catalyst, catharsis, salt and snow,
a sun-burned bridge on a shrouded bay,
a hunger, a banquet,
a mother, a grave.
Kent Leatham is a poet, translator, editor, and critic. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Fence, Zoland, Poetry Quarterly, Poets & Artists, InTranslation, Ezra, Rowboat, and The Battered Suitcase. Kent serves as a poetry editor for Black Lawrence Press, and lives in Pacific Grove.
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The line cut first,
then, before I began to bleed,
the gills with their edges like steel and glass
flared, and I opened my palms and dropped
the lingcod I had struggled so long to bring
out of the darkness, this passage, this rite,
you yelled something and held it down
with your foot while you took a hammer from your belt
and swung against the skull until
the eyes bulged, broke free, one returned
to the sea and one remained on the sand
while I sucked my hand and did not want
any part of this thing we had done.
Song
“The dignity of death is here”
—Joaquin Miller
Time has changed, but California
is still the best place to die
—in September, when the hills are sheets
of gold on ancient, unmade beds
and Spanish moss hangs from the pines
like tassels of fog, sun-dried and stiff
(tassels of fog or souls? Perhaps
the Esselen, who left their mortars
and acorn meal at the Spanish cross,
and every canyon a burning rash
of poison oak, and the buzzard’s eye
—the best dying place, near the raw coast,
abalone dust, sardine scales, ladders of kelp,
the clown-faced otters with their big dog teeth
afloat like angels on the world’s edge
while white gulls scream and cry for God
to wash up, bleached, bloated, soft,
bones like Chinese jade, fists
delicately clenched like anemones,
while in cemeteries, silent deer
puncture the earth with their perfect hooves…
and freeways, yes, and celebrities
—Eastwood, Schwarzenegger, the dusty crossroads
at Cholame where James Dean died
(Cholame: population 5,
sunk on the toes of the Temblor mountains
and the vicious, patient San Andreas),
because all California is a fault,
a rubbing-raw of spirit and flesh,
catalyst, catharsis, salt and snow,
a sun-burned bridge on a shrouded bay,
a hunger, a banquet,
a mother, a grave.
Kent Leatham is a poet, translator, editor, and critic. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Fence, Zoland, Poetry Quarterly, Poets & Artists, InTranslation, Ezra, Rowboat, and The Battered Suitcase. Kent serves as a poetry editor for Black Lawrence Press, and lives in Pacific Grove.
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