bluepoint bluefish

i bought two oysters shipped 2,200 miles from my “hometown” if you don’t believe in municipalities.

they tasted like displacement and a grueling attempt to resurrect a dying city. their 4.5 inch lumpy shell filled my hand, broken travertine steps shaded like the grease on a late-century metro-north frame. stone coated with smudge. permanently painted in exhaust.

i’ve only known sidewalks to be heavy, coated with the spite of balding tires who collect themselves under the feet of baby mamas, whisked aside by the wheels of baby daddies. neglected by multi-generational mayoral seats.

at the hinge, i scraped off the smudge precipitated from immigrants bodies.

i know nitrogen. i know decay. it smells like the breath that whispers sweet nothings in your ear while being held in a chokehold. or a knife to the neck. gun to the head. it lines the husk, hides in the hinge, is filtered by flesh, but is bound to the bodies that can never escape. we poisoned the bluepoints beds and cast away its name to those whom we erased. whose names still line our rivers, but not the beds that make us money.

my ‘99 Avalon swallowed the smell of the bluepoints swell in 80 degrees. its breath dragged me through SONO in my 20’s. hovered over the bluefish stadiums turf as the train circled us with humility. clung to my lips after almost every first kiss. and on the rare chance I have the opportunity to sweat in humidity, sometimes I can smell the Sound rise from my pores as it attempts to breathe despite it being suffocated by nitrogen from the industries.

and as our bridges struggle to withstand the weight of our “work”, we ship our bastard stewards across the country.

ashes to ashes.

dust to dust.

bodies to bodies.

we are what we eat.