Do you think it odd
they call me a gray cod?
Why not note
my few cute whiskers
like a catfish?
You like to think of us as gray
as the day you’ll have us:
when you eat a dish of cod
as scrod, saltfish, fish sticks,
fish fry, fishcake, ball or finger,
lutefish, stockfish, bacalaítos,
smokie, frito, finnan haddie,
crappit heid and cullen skink,
cod liver oil or cabbie claw.
We even make cheap isinglass:
our air bladders used to clarify beer
or thicken your dessert.
Trawling for me,
or by hook and line—
you caught me, fine.
But don’t let me collapse
like my Atlantic brothers.
Remember, we’ve caused wars.
We’ve disappeared before.
This poem first appeared in collaboration with Dr. Adam Summers’ fish skeleton photos in “Cleared” Exhibition (Seattle Aquarium) and “Picturing Science” Exhibition (Slovenian Natural History Museum and Piran Aquarium, Slovenia); featured in The Guardian (2014).
—
Sierra Nelson is a Seattle-based poet, lyric essayist, and multimedia performance artist. Nelson’s books include The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions) and collaborative I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press), and she edited the cephalopod-inspired anthology Three Hearts (World Enough Writers). A MacDowell Fellow and Carolyn Kizer Prize winner, her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Cascadia Field Guide and I Sing the Salmon Home.
