PIER 54

Bulldozers orange the quay,
archeologists nosing frozen revolvers,
Milwaukee's Best aluminum strata,
Kirin bottles warm brown, Rolling
Rock needle-green, Popov fifths
cheap clear. We killed our After Shocks
& stumbled from Frontier Bar & Grill
unsnarling Zebcos with WD-40. Bottom

fish are far easier to catch when drunk
than salmon...treble hooks loaded
with herring-head stinkbait...cast,
drink, recast, jig--wham! mopbucket full

of flounder and rockcod. Some bastard
in a suit says "don't eat those." So the
flounder's got tumors & the cod slime-rash?
We cook the hell out of them. Skagit Flats

geese rocket overhead, tired swans clatter
onto Anthony's too-red cedar walkways,
panting like unfed tigers. I walk through
the hissing horde, slopping the remaining
stinkbait. There's a gunshot from a Russian
trawler, then steam snarls from an espresso
kiosk...madness, this Port Authority...I
prefer mudflat, diatom scum, rockheaps.
The oxalic acid scoured fountains burble.

Sam the Korean fishmonger says "this suck!"
Soto Capowood, Chinook carver, chants "hy-iu
hee-hee!"--loada laughs--the street vet Klips
sloshes his lone mopbucket red crab: "should
be full, goddammit!" The razor clam wastage
cutoff warden says, "I'm retired." He rests
on beaverboard stapled with stripclub coupons,
drinking Rainier. In my eyes
the sun, another disposable, flutters.

--Fernand Roqueplan

NECK VERSE

(The Medieval Catholic Church's "Rules of Benefit" allowed the accused last words in the form of neke verse; infrequently these deathsongs moved the interrogators to clemency, hence the cliché "to save one's neck." Conversely, one accused of regicide could shorten a torturous execution by uttering such blasphemies as to provoke an arrow or sword...Neke verses traditionally included the first half of Psalm 51)

 

You shan't have my name, God warned IAM, IAM:
is Christ the ridiculous gutter, the fetters embarked
under duress through a thousand date-filled demiurges?
Beware, I was conceived and brought forth
iniquitous, in sin my mother bled and writhed:
have mercy, decentgod, direct lovingkindness
to the hangman's twist; blow as I deny gouty priests
a thief's confession, a forty hill lover, a vague child.
Richly brocaded, fat pale necks racked dewlaps
above thick wolf collars of soft platina fur, wherever
they go, O Lord, make my sentence their passage.

The sacrifices to God are broken spirits,
shattered wills, desolate and contrite hearts:
which benefice do I ask, which pretense exhibit
when I believe Christ a sullen acrolith--trunk
wooden, skull draped with Coptic gibberish?
I was Christ once--arms and legs pliant stone--
I too had a friend called Paul who obediently
shuffled through the ashes of each Quemadero
for keepsakes: a yellowed tooth, a cruciform
gold globule. Christ lives in the falconer, the bursar
(Holy church cinched round his ankle like a bewit)
the horrid bells pealing as angels soar and swoop
forever and everafter absolution's burnt offering.

This hopeless clausula,
evil inward where desire
pleasures the withered queen
on the heat of laurel faggots burning,
O God, O God now
the bone-baring force of your love!

 

--Fernand Roqueplan

LAST STATION

The old Burlington men
in the Cinder Bed Café
spoon red chili, roll cigarettes,
click yellow nails on battered
pewter hip flasks.
Speak of Palouse, Ogeechee,
Claylock, Spindle, Thurston
(rivers once solid with steelhead
now hectares of stripmall tarmac)

and heads droop, so angry
so long the power to curse
has sublimated to another drink
poured, another cigarette snuffed.
More night, another morning:
chaff, dust and weed
unbroken slow-motion blowing;
the old Burlington men tap
blue plates daisied with fried eggs.

There's a girl they're afraid
to leave with. She sometimes tricks
them into lighting her cigarettes,
rustles the halls of their wallets
for photographs and retired cards.
Whenever they bob their heads
sleeping, sitting, she sips their drinks,
her breath fogging the glass rims.
She's not bad looking: crinoline doll's
hair and eyes the off-green of plantain.
She's the pack-animal of their dreams.

--Fernand Roqueplan