Summer may be ending but Bill Yarrow still takes us to a fish-fry. Yet how often does a fish-fry make you contemplate your mortality?
—
Fish Boil
It’s a cheap way to feed three hundred people.
Hot fire. Metal pot. Peeled potatoes. Raw fish.
Control the temperature with a garden hose.
Burn off the scum with kerosene. Use giant
aluminum colanders. Lift them out with iron rods.
Set up a buffet table. Scatter picnic benches over
the grounds. Truck in some spicy cole slaw.
Provide trays and salt and pepper. If you boil it,
they will come. Those in shorts and socks. Those
in sundresses sans brassieres. Those in cocktail
gowns. The talk will be of bones and sunscreen
and beer and bones. Careful of the bones. You
have to protect the bones. Put sunscreen on
your bones. Death has an appetite for bones.
***
A version of this poem was published in Ramshackle Review. It also appears in Pointed Sentences.
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Photo by Julie Kertesz /Flickr