Bloodworms (ROUND 2)

Let's workshop this poem about a boy watching his dad bait hooks with bloodworms--the ritual of piercing and blood becoming a lesson in masculinity, fear, and the strange currency of love between them

scent of the day: Aran, by Prin

Starts off surprisingly barbershop (I even get a sense of unstated lavender)—like a smoky animalic twist on barbershop (good clash of light and dark) / Soap frame does stay (mainly a function of the oakmoss) as the barbershop vibe settles into a muskier and more animalic sibling of Meo Fusciuni’s Last Season: vegetal, fungal, leathery, sandalwoody—so much in common / the mushroom plus oud plus oakmoss even gives a briny seaweed impression like in Last Season, only there it is more pronounced.

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Bloodworms

Striper season in the early 1990s, east bank of the Hudson
not far south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge—my dad 
had his borrowed rod cast out for food. To him—bareback
and burned, beaten by beer but blaming it all on the sun
(“Sun’ll fuckin kill ya boy!”)—the PCB toxicity warnings
on whatever swam north of the Tappan Zee were no matter.

Anytime my dad reeled in a robbed hook, it was my job—
a sad blob sucking down soda and chips into love’s obesity—
to pass him a bloodworm. But I leaned into my age, passing
him the whole gas-station carton instead. I was too afraid
to dig through the seaweed mesh for a seven-inch terror—
venom-fanged, their skin tags ever paddling along each side.

I would know it was coming. “Gonna try baitin the bitch?”
The shove tucked into the question only felt more savage
against his no-biggie delivery. But for him, as with me now,
to be loved was more important than to spur elevation.
He would leave me nerve-racked, just a moment, before
cutting me some slack and showing off how easy it was.

He would agitate the pink alien with a grin at me, its insides
bursting out like a switchblade. Black fangs, four in a star—
he would let them sink into his nicotined finger, the clench
resisting counter pull enough to justify the payback hook
driven down the tube. So much blood, the red of our own, 
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/