When the Ashes Settled

She was reading Plath
like a Pomeranian
barking at the trashman.
It was new to her, you see,
but when she reached, "Ach, du,"
the words grew like stalactites
on her lip.  "Excuse me," I said,
flicking them off.
I should have known better;
she was rising from the ashes,
twisting her wings, looking for air.
So I told her to fly:
it was a proposal, that's all.
When the ashes settled,
she was painted above the horizon,
and, brushing myself off,
I yelled after her,
"Thanks, Love!  Keep your head out of ovens!"


(Hot Springs News, 1982; Poems by Poets Roundtable of Arkansas, 1983)

The Jagalchi Fish Market

It's as if the Sea of Japan threw up
its entire bounty on the wharf
of the Jagalchi Fish Market,
the largest in Korea, in the world,
from what I've seen,
stall after stall,
alley after alley,
street after street
of fish,
long and shaped like spears fish,
those discus flounders,
mackerel, tuna, red fish, blue fish,
a pile of octopodes draped over cardboard boxes,
tentacles, suckers up, as long as my legs,
a woman, sitting on a bucket, opening oysters,
trays of them on the half-shell, ready to eat,
while another cooks tempura,
another offers sashimi,
while crabs push for space in tanks,
blow fish swim, and below them in shallow basins,
spiny urchins, clams, mussels, spitting anemones,
or something, sea cucumbers,
all smelling like the sea,
as fresh as a breaking wave.

We walked for hours,
looking, photographing, eating.

Three days later in Seoul,
our sneakers began to stink
like the seafood section at Winn-Dixie, Kroger's,
Safeway, Publix, Fred Myers, Piggly Wiggly...


SK/August 2014