Off Lasqueti

for Thor Johnson

We clean fish
all day

200 coho
anonymous flesh
thumping into the hold
gulls and dog fish thrashing
astern for gills
like red dahlias
huge pink worms
of guts

blood seeps into
everything

scales
like mica fragments
on our faces
on our hands
as we eat

scrub the gutting box &
deck to break the slip
of the slime & black
dry blood

all this killing
grows
like scales over
my eyes

he says you got to
think of it
as a harvest

I dream of spoons
like scythes
threshing
in the deep

:: Kevin Roberts, in Going for Coffee (1981)