Erica
Funkhouser
The women who clean fish are all named Rose
or Grace. They wake up close to the water,
damp and dreamy beneath white sheets,
thinking of white beaches.
It is always humid where they work.
Under plastic aprons, their breasts
foam and bubble. They wear old clothes
because the smell will never go.
On the floor, chlorine.
On the window, dry streams left by gulls.
When tourists come to watch them
working over belts of cod and hake,
they don't look up.
They stand above the gutter. When the belt starts
they pack the bodies in, ten per box,
their tails crisscrossed as if in sacrament.
The dead fish fall compliantly.
It is the iridescent scales that stick,
clinging to cheek and wrist,
lighting up hours later in a dark room.
The packers say they feel orange spawn
between their fingers, the smell of themselves
more like salt than peach.
"The Women Who Clean Fish" is from Natural
Affinities, by Erica Funkhouser (Alice James Books). ©
Erica Funkhouser 1983.
Used by permission of the author and of Alice James Books.
