Bloodworms

Let's workshop this poem

Bloodworms

It was striper season in the early nineties/
on the eastern bank of the Hudson River,/
just south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge./
My dad, bareback-sloshed with beer and sun,/
had his deep-sea pole cast for food. To him/
no matter were the toxicity warnings/ 
on most fish north of the Tappan Zee.// 

When my dad reeled in a hook gone empty,/
it was my job to pass him the white carton/
of gas station bloodworms—too little/
to do much more than pass, too afraid/ 
to dig through that mesh of moist seaweed/
for a seven-inch aggressive: venom-fanged,/ 
a band of pulsing skin tags down each side.//

Inevitably my dad would slur, “Wanna try/
baitin’ the bitch?” His casual delivery,/
so he knew, painted the task so trouble-free/
that the command at the core of his question/
stood out all the more. But he was not serious./
He knew me. He would leave me nerve-racked,/
just a moment, before showing how easy it was.// 

A squeeze to protract its eversible proboscis,/
my dad would let the four black fangs pierce/
his nicotine finger, leaving the worm to dangle/
for me. Then he would drive the hook down/ 
the retracting mouth, throughout the pink body./
So much blood, the color of ours, would pool/
in the creases of his hands, dripping to rocks.

*This poem originally appeared in Underwater New York 10 (Hudson River).

Photo credit: flickr.com/photos/versageek/