Blacknose Skate/Skate Fishing

Clearstories

24×30 in

Archival Inkjet Print

2017

$1,750/set unframed

Skate Fishing by Naila Moreira

Their mouths moved me most,
flesh-lipped, white, gasping,
womanly lips, married to death.

They came up fast, like widgets
or shirts or yoghurt cups
on the conveyor belt of quality,

clubbed on the head, one after next
with the fisherman’s red rubber mallet.
Life, the design flaw of food—

not even a mushroom
nor grain of wheat free of it.
The motor chuckled and hissed

and churned its sea-colored secret
filamentous lattice of green.
Detangled of net,

flung on the deck,
subdued, still alive, they sucked air,
blinking eyes black-hollow as ghosts.

The deck hand stumbled on dozens
of skins slippery under his boots
to saw off their sides for market,

these salt-loving angels of water
who soar the great Atlantic
on wings now unable to lift them

or breaths to inflate them
with the stuff of heaven:
that intangible soul of being

for which we would sell anything.