Air breathes easy off the gold river.
Dusted mountains hulk indifferent to us
fools in the valley below, killing
time at a rest stop on stilts
bestride a riverbank.
Cheerful enough,
an ajumma hums a wordless tune.
Her plastic tent and lawn chairs,
red-bitten-pink, sport Coke ads and
that dignity acquired in bald thrift.
She slaps the tent flap open,
swats hair (dyed black and permed tight
in the patriotic style of women her age)
from her forehead with a hand
like a brown spade.
Curious and cityslick,
biology animates me like a child.
I kneel before her tank of uninteresting fish
whispering “hello, pretty,”
to their gapemouthed, stupid faces.
Humming still, our proprietress gathers
baskets and a net. A small, sharp knife
flashes in her spade. It gleams an ode
to brute utility. She corners her catch:
three fat fluorescent Yellows
and a slippery, darting Black.
She lays the first electric Yellow
on a wooden plank.
Her indelicate but practiced spade
slices two rough cuts and takes
a wide triangle from the fish’s belly.
Guileless, I stand transfixed
before the pastoral carnage.
The fish flaps. Digging, she scrapes
wet organs from the gaping wound. Again,
and again; the disembowelment
of Yellows is inexact; half
a ruptured heart left in one,
much billowing white intestine in another.
Black puts up a fight.
In a gesture nearly sweet, the ajumma
slaps it weakly on the head
with the handle of the knife.
No luck. Un-stunned, it’s likewise gutted
and thrown into the basket
From a hose at her feet,
she rinses the blade
before her hands.
Passed under water,
the eviscerated fish
heave for a last wet breath.
I wonder at this organless lost cause.
She tips the basket into a metal pan and
fills it with scalding broth.
One fat Yellow squirms in vivid agony.
She clucks at it once as if to say,
“Be still now, empty thing.
Die as you are meant to.”
When the pan quiets,
she takes up her song again.
