1.
Our kids don’t sleep, so we stumble through
the days. A bedroom brood chamber, 

queen (us), single (five year old), and
crib (baby), while clean laundry in

the blue latticed basket shouts 
“fold me” as it squats in an unclogged 

square meter of bedroom, but there’s
no room for a body to sort 

clean boxers, so I wear nylon 
gym shorts—washed daily, in our 

soaped, porcelain white bathroom sink.

2.
We climb the hours until bedtime, 
our PhDs granting knowledge  

and fretful thoughts, as we navigate
the minefield of our home. Eyeless toes 

step lightly over homeless pacifiers 
and Legos strewn across red oak floors

like a modern version of Van Gogh’s 
sunflowers. Some breaths are half

taken, as we shrug, and another 
furrow joins the quartet at lip’s corner. 

3.
I’m an only child raised by a 
single Mom—now a father—young girls

and rhinestones a mystery, though my
wife—youngest of six—navigates

this sea of girlness like a homing 
salmon, zig-zagging through 21st 

century seas. Masters of class 
rooms, our tools—logic and analysis 

mostly fail with these girls. Some
dilemmas ethical—should we or 

shouldn’t we buy the requested
Barbies? Scientist Barbie makes

the cut, as do Latinx Engineer,
and African-American physician 

Barbie. Mom said “a boy—no dolls”.

4.
Nightmares run through our beds again, and I’m 
empty as the valves of a shucked oyster. 

But it’s time to animate the  
Barbies and I’m clueless, and dead

tired. Moving to Rachel’s room, my 
back against her bed—we sit on the

blue-grey braided rug, a Barbie 
in each hand and she says in a

slightly irritated, bird voice “make 
the Barbies talk, Daddy. Make them talk.” 

So I am pushing through my weariness, 
plumbing the depths of creativity,

and I morph Barbie One into a surgeon 
performing an appendectomy, while

Barbie Two quickly earns a PhD 
in astrophysics and begins lecturing

on black holes. I amuse Rachel for
five minutes and forty-two seconds— 

then she says “that was okay, but now
let’s change their outfits”.
                        

My town is creative—music, art, 
literature. Most come for college, 
stay on—futoning house to house—
fiscal sustenance a carousel 
with only part-time horses—barista, 
server, barback, cashier, revolving
year by year—rent, food, car insurance, 
gas—chances at club gigs, group shows,
open mics, art openings, and signings.

It’s a granitic life—millennia 
of heat and pressure—the “break” 
just around the corner of Lumpkin
and Clayton—always taking a toll.

After thirty years I still cry,  

every time I read an obituary  
stating “cause unknown”.
                        

Sorted on ice—an Expressionist 
palette of rockfish reds and oranges 
flare, but the greens and blues of skipjack 
and bonito dominate like good 
waves at Rincon, while doormat flounder 
sport a yin-yang of espresso top and 
creamy underside.

A memory of La Boqueria, just 
off the Ramblas in the Barrio 
Gothico, Barcelona’s old town, 
old like zero CE, Common Era 
that is, a less inciting marker 
than Anno Domini. Every fish 
kiosk holds constellations of species, 
maybe thirty apiece.

Shot-glass eyes, gaping mouths and fiery
dermis signify beasts from light-swallowing
depths, mostly rockfish but an exotic 
or two like orange roughy, now 
overfished—odd flat barrel shape
and clan membership—the slimeheads. 
Who knew they lived two-hundred years?  

Boom and bust describes many things.

But in Athens, Georgia, the Kroger 
resists whole fish, just fillets and steaks 
presented—unclad muscles, gray-white to 
pink—myomeres now released from bone 
and scales, sad as a leaf-less forest, 
or black fungused stalks of corn. 

I remember Gramma’s halting steps— 
opening our back door for Newman 
the Fish Man, who delivered blue pike 
from Lake Ontario’s thirty meter 
isocline, shallow water perch that 
fried up light as clouds in June 
and bass, striped with the salted smell 
and taste of  a Long Island beach.


When did we unplug the world—build
that synthetic wall of cinder block 
and mortar, slip into our vacuum-sealed 
bed for safety and comforting warmth? 
Was it puberty, adulthood or 
parenthood?

I wipe a few grains of river sand 
from my eyes, and hope for a
tap on my line.