By Jeremy Radin
You arrive at sunrise, just as I return
to scrape away the scales of sturgeon
brought back by the fishermen who sleep,
it’s said, curled up in their own beards.
It’s taken years—I’ve tracked the time
through several generations of ravens
waiting on the outskirts of the market-
place, a chuckling demimonde doomed
to mulish prophet-mood. They croaked
you’d come; you’d proved them wrong
until today; you bimble in, bedecked
in linen and guipure—a triple lustrum
having passed, you bring your son
who gasps at ruby innards strewn
across the marble slab and splattered
on my apron-front. You say we’ve not
yet finished—time has only raveled
like a bat caught in your curls our
grasping appetites. Now your husband’s
lost inside the clutch of some masseuse
who plucked him from the mines.
His loss, madame, is my profound
bewilderment. I’ve met myself at last
among the sacred opening of fish
for spice and smoke. I’ve chosen peace.
It’s been so long; I don’t remember
how to touch, be touched; like scales
I scraped that life away and here you are,
a fleet of Januaries, asking me to breathe
your breath again. Where in this fish-
monger’s life might I fit a wife, a wife’s
designs? Ride back, my dear,
unto your chaparral and let me waste
my days again. But take, please,
as a token of your brazenness, this tin,
my last, of Almas caviar.
Jeremy Radin is a writer and actor. His poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, The Sun, Only Poems, and elsewhere. He is the author of three collections of poetry: Belly God (Orison Books, forthcoming 2026, selected by Ellen Bass), Dear Sal (Not A Cult, 2022), Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012). As an actor, he has worked extensively in theater, film and tv. He lives in New York, where he likes to sit in the park and point at birds.
