Featured Selection of the Month:
May 2003

For a time, I believed alewives
a busty fish, the matronly incarnation
of the barmaid in the fish world.
Squint-eyed, jaded, half-ash cigarette
on their lips, sporting tired fins from last
century's wardrobe; demanding all comers
their business; serving tumblers of throat-
catching cider or beer; cracked at the gills
with gin-dry humor; the fishmonger's mistress.

What a disappointment to find
they are the first to wash up on the sand
at any suggestion of storm
or pollution, and are seldom employed
for intra-piscatory bait – not thrown
to the two-tone orca, not even the most
entertaining seal – but resigned to the amateur's
hook at best. A feeble breed. The inevitable
stink on the beach. An hors d'oeuvre (salted
and dried) at a faux Scandanavian pub, to wash down
with a pint of weak lager
or chromosome-altering vodka, straight.
Pasty snack mix of eyeball and tail
with a lingering low tide aftertaste. Generic.
Embarrassing. Of uncertain gender.
The fly-catching carpet of high tide or gale.
Certainly nobody's mistress.