4/1/1998 g.g.Ashbrook
Rivers was the Mormon green grocer who cast his line a light a late night, an open cup, and black bread for over board broads’ cast cap teeth, and the sinker sat hilt hip to supper splash for a fine fork of oper-cumber nugs. He take a long in and a big white out. Some screaming bird raged to revenge it’s wounded father found a waving raveled ridge of burnt string and seemed quite content to sit and twitch. Overthe. The sea calling, “hammond, hammond, your sausages are ready, hammond.” Rivers rubbed his backleg and rotated his crackneck, and when returned to that natural and snap-released let the sinker sail and his eyes watching the water rim on either side unable to make up its mind.
“Call the man back,” but the truck was long gone. Two hundred boxes of potato chips out the back delivered bright and early to a specialty bate traders shack-o-wares, worms, minnows, tumble back to sea with, man’s mighty rippled sour cream and cheddar. Overthe, on the backo’thetruck.
Sandy. A woman out of expensive thorn bushes said to bring small orange fruit that tasks as like the color as the birds call from phone polls to dropped groceries. Down the pier she walks, with a bad hip, and a smile brought by dime wafers and peanut butter from a jar and her one hand has the butter all back over. Crime.
Look at her crimson, teeth. Rawhoo sees with nothingbutlove in his eyes as his bit of fiberglass and a motor bobbed and showed her bellies barnacle ridges. Here is the only sea where the red barnacles swarm, and where nar a man caught anything from the far sea for fifty years. At summernight, which follows win-chaff-smooter Sail-brigatiers call away (crusty bread) Over The Old Radio, loafs of bread and fresh vegetables stick out from under the sand, giftwrapped in spiced seaweed.
Rivers’ pocket bulges out, full of water. Strings with coconuts at their ends dangle from the sky. One nut, with a tube white as a straw ever knelt before an iron judge, worked it’s capillary into his mouth. Slow sips. Overthe. The sun rolling down the horizon bowling clouds out of the way. Seagulls with toesocks. Rivermagic. Microwave. Bits of debris in crystal family, a pocket in-between a trash can and a trollop’s wallet. Or Walter Cunningham’s over for dinner invitation. A ticket stub peaking out from behind straw wrappers and plastic small talk, which allofwhich he pushes sycophant back into the pockets bottom.
Hover Overthe. With a silk black slick head, and a beak for digging seed holes, and a red stripe for catching tripe, and a mind for mackerel, a cod’s code of honor, and a hake’s coat of arms, with a tight belt around a tight belly, a memory for back on some other continent where at this very moment a bet was taking place between an old Irish banker, and a Welsh seal trapper. The banker said, “Take my boat out and by the morning I’ll bury you in your own hands I’ll race the sun togethere before you!” And the Trapper replied, “You take my boat and the bet is on!” And from there they began. Molly rubbing wrinkles from her eyes and Apollo Stones from heal and hip. Junry on her widows walk eating a thin slice of cheese with an apple sliced not quite as thin. The orange wooden truck pulls into the back of old Hanlen’s house, to deliver his chips. And Rock Mermon’s Rivers’ Sister’s dancing Rain and Sun.