Entries to our Ode to a Dead Salmon contest are posted below, in order by date. Check back often for new submissions. Copyright belongs to the authors. NUMBERS are for tagging purposes only.
NUMBER ONE 8-11-09 Kasilof Submitted by Rosemary, aka bikegirl
Ah, silvery beauty pulled from my net,
left torn and twisted
by your powerful struggle,
all urges calling you like the North Star guiding shepherds,
or prospectors
up the pebbled river
with its murky glacial-fed water
colder than this ocean
from where I have pulled you over the bow onto my lap.
Caught as you were in a sqaure of the net,
tied and retied at the beginning of each season,
the gap just large enough to allow you in
yet keep you from passing through or backing out.
Your quest denied.
Still powerful and persistent, like the ocean waves
but no, not for you.
Your urges denied.
Like those of a teenager escorted to the dance
by her mother.
Denied, though you don’t know:
This is your prime!
After this, it would be all suffering:
The struggle upstream, up rapids,
past bank fishermen, boat fishermen, bears,
up and up until that moment when you have lost your lustre
shaken your bootie and in satisfaction, inevitable:
Disappointment.
That’s it?
With this, I die?
But here I have removed you from my net
at your prime.
Entangled there just long enough
your flip has about flopped.
Now I hold your cold, stiff, slimy wet body
pull you to my lips.
And with a salty kiss, I thank you,
let you slide into my empty bucket.
Satisfied!
NUMBER TWO 8-11-09 You Don't Lose Your Woman Submitted by Rosemary, aka bikegirl
Anyone could see he was no pretty Lower-48 yuppie mountain climber here for a guided trip to conquer Denali, the Great One. Not one fluff of fleece on his body as he leaned against the bar in Talkeetna, looking at a painting of the mountain with little flags marking locations of climbers on its flanks. No North Patagucchi for him. Nope, he was all Alaskan. From his Ketchikan sneakers to his worn-in Carhartts, his red and black flannel shirt all the way to his stocking cap, loosely knit of tan marled yarn, thick, like what someone would wear if they were spending a lot of time out on the water in the wind. His face was unshaven, tan and windburned because he had, in fact, been out on the water. He lifted a beer to his lips and took a long drink. He made a face, puckering his lips, and paused, holding the glass in the air as he rested his elbow on top of the bar. The best IPA was like him - bitter. And he had reason to be.
After returning from a season on the boat, a short season at that, he realized the adage his buddies had joked about was true. He’d lost his turn. His woman was gone. Karen had packed up all her things and moved in with Wayne. He took another drink. Well, he thought, though he could have said it aloud, and maybe he had because the bartender, Gus, looked up and nodded in apparent response when he heard, “Well, guess this is how ol’ Wayne felt when she left him and moved in with me.”
NUMBER THREE 8-11-09 All that Glitters Submitted by Rosemary, aka bikegirl
For a year the media did drool
On the web and cable ‘twas a virtual duel
I ask, may we return now to the days
when yodeling we did praise
And the most famous Alaskan was Jewel?
NUMBER FOUR 8-10-09 Submitted by Toni
So there I was at the luau, pining for pines, and some fur trees - you know that scent they give off in the forest - and wishing for a little birch sap under my sandals to stick them to the pavement and maybe a squirrel or a moose would whiz by just so I could get a glimpse of some wildlife besides the feral farm animals I usually see. I guess a moose wouldn’t whiz by, though would most definitely whiz. I mean, he’d notice that there were no alder saplings to munch and realize he was in Hawaii and that would probably scare the whiz and everything else right out of him. So there, at the luau, I was feeling homesick for Alaska even though I don’t live there. Is that weird? Being homesick for a place you don’t live but not feeling quite at home in the place where you do live? Yeah, I’d say that was weird. People visit Hawaii all the time and never leave. I could see myself doing that in Alaska, as long as I could spend a week or two each January here.
Where was I? Ah. The Luau. Now, kalua pork always makes me feel better about being here in the islands. There I stood at my spot in the long buffet line, having just tonged out a wad of the stuff and plopped it, in all its juicy, greasy, shredded splendor onto my plate (try saying juicy, greasy, shredded splendor fast three times) when, upon taking another step, found myself staring down into a giant bowl of lomi salmon. Lomi. As in massaged, to knead, to mix. There’s lomi lomi and huli huli. Spun around. That’s me. Mixed up and spun around. There’s not much contrast in a bowl of lomi salmon, the blush of salmon chopped to bits, salty and definitely dead, dead, dead. The tomatoes are also deceased, a washed-out hothouse hue, and the onions, not cooked but translucent none-the-less. No, not much contrast at all. You can hardly spot the flecks of salmon from the chunks of tomato. It’s not like the difference between Alaska and Hawaii. People make the comparison all the time. Forty-nine and fifty, like you could actually get confused regarding which state you were in if you didn’t read the signs at the airport. Native culture. Natural splendor. Our senators are friends with Alaskan senators. Kindred spirits, they say. Bosom buddies. And everybody eats fish in both places. Apparently, the same fish. It spawned on me: there are no salmon in Hawaii. Why then, is lomi salmon a traditional dish at luaus? It’s in the deli at all the markets here, too. People make it for holidays. Lomi salmon. It’s the blandest, most boring way to eat dead salmon that I know.
Standing there, staring into that bowl of salted fish flesh, I had just returned from a fresh trip to the great white north, where people seem a little more rugged and self sufficient than anyplace else. And they know their fish, especially salmon. An Alaskan can tell by smell on the grill if it’s king or coho or sockeye. Here, any salmon will do. Even (now don’t pass out here) farmed salmon. I know the mere thought of such a thing is blasphemy of the highest order in the last frontier. In Hawaii, it just has to be pink, salty and chopped fine. With lomi salmon, you can’t really taste the fish, let along smell it. Dead tuna is something different. People know about that here, and while the native Hawaiians are accomplished fishermen and eat their share, it’s the locals of Japanese decent who know best their yellow fin from their big eye. No steaming chunks in banana leaves for them. It’s all raw, all the time. They are connoisseurs of different cuts of tuna, just like any true midwesterner knows a filet mignon from a sirloin. So in that way, Hawaii and Alaska are the same. We know our local fish. Really though, it seems a copout to steal someone else’s pride and joy and make it your own, claim it as a part of your culture, as with lomi salmon. It would be like the Tlingit suddenly deciding to serve poi at all their celebrations.
What does all this mean? Are Alaska and Hawaii the same or different? Don’t ask me. I’m lomi lomi, as I said, all mixed up. All I know is, when a salmon is dead, it should be appreciated, not camouflaged in minced tomatoes, its rich flavor obscured by salt and onions. It should be savored in it’s purest state. After all, the poor fish has passed on. He’s gone to meet his maker. Belly up as they say. Kicked the bucket. So give a scaly buggah a break, will ya?
NUMBER FIVE 8-7-09 Submitted by Arctic Rose
Here's to the salmon that graces
the line at the end of my pole
He hangs there cold and lifeless
He will never know what it is to be old
He gave his life and generations
to be baked on a bed of coal
Here's to the salmon that graces
my table at dinner time
The kids are all in there places
Hunger makes a pink taste fine
Quickly we say our respects
the wife uncorks a bottle of wine
Here's to the salmon that graces
the bottom of my garbage pail
He used to have flesh in more places
now his back is skinny as a rail
A hearty cheer for dear old salmon
and that is the end of his tail
NUMBER SIX 8-5-09 Ode to Stinkin’ Submitted by Fisher Girlfriend
Dead salmon in the middle of the path stinking to high heaven—Ancient folk song (Circa, 1973).
O Humpy! An eagle dropped you in the park,
a cyclist ran over you in the dark.
O beautiful salmon! Putrefied and parched
atop you a hundred tourists marched.
And there you decayed and stank in the sun,
when I happened on you during a morning run.
I paused to move you from the path
so as not to encounter a bruin’s wrath.
But then, O Humpy! I saw your eyes
and thought you must have once been wise.
to swim so far from the ocean’s deep,
navigating currents your scent did keep.
You finned and spermed in the riverbed
and left your babies on the mud-bank’s edge.
Sad now, though, those sloughing scales,
but your end is better than my own sad tale.
O Humpy! I buried you beside the trail
and then at once I started to wail.
See, I’d been out there runnin’ and a thinkin’
about my ole’ man and all his drinkin’.
Bout how his eyes are glossy and thick
and when he smooches me, I just feel sick.
His hugs feel more like a nasty squish,
no six-pack abs as I’d once wished.
O Splendid Humpy!
Lover or fish, does it really matter?
Seems I'd rather smell the rot of the latter.
But what’s an Alaskan girl to think
cause after a while—they all start to stink.
NUMBER SEVEN 7-29-09 Submitted by Lesley
"Why as a Mighty Salmon I Will Not Leave"
Do not cry for me, I shall not leave
those who share my love
my spawn
I swim against the great river that is ours thereon
'neath soaring peaks and o'er frost heaves
put here to remind that I am me
why I am me
that I am humbly great
Nature calls me to my dream so that my scales slip off the sexist critique
(for the fact that I have eggs and vast stores of oil)
and like chill water off the feathers of the migratory goose so courageously
departs
corruptions of an evil coast elite
so shall I too defy the hooks and devious nets of socialist media
who seek to filet and hang me to dry
but I shall never die
I repel those maggots and sea lice that infest
by leaps across the surge chill waters pure
very like brave soldiers sent to save our cherished Land
not fish but woman and man
for I am best
and writhe against cruel microscopes of logic choppers
scientists who work for godless enemy's behest
Their secret motives bald
but mightier than they for I am called
I will not decay yet I shall spawn
and swim against the flow 'til all else is gone
NUMBER EIGHT 7-28-09 Submitted by Tanja
Not fuscous, rubious, cretaceous, vinaceous, albugineous, sanguineous...
testaceous, phoeniceous... melichrous, puniceous, flammeous...
Chrysochlorous, luteolous, stramineous, porraceous, cinerious, fuliginous...
Neither badious, piceous, griseous, coccineous, brunneous, caesious, glaucous...
Icteritious, ochroleucous, lateritious, niveous, plumbeous, olivaceous...
Nor aeneous, castaneous, spadiceous, vinous, prasinous, porphyrous...
Violaceous, citreous,miniaceous, chlorochrous, atrous, cyaneous, rufous...
Or even cesious, pyrrhous, rubiginous, sulphureous, luteous, fulvous...
But. Just. Plain. Pink.
Salmon pink to be exact.
As I look into your eyes
Glazed over with the bleakness of death
In a tomb of aspic jelly,
I think of all the shades of pink
That could have been...
Fuchsia; amaranth;
Carnation; rose; lavender;
I think...
Isn’t salmon a pinkish kind of orange anyway?
Oh! Dead Salmon;
On a bed of carrageen you lie
Garnished with lemon and parsley.
Oh! Dead Salmon;
Surrounded by cucumber and tomato circles
Instead of peers, parr and smolts...
After death in semelparity.
Oh! Dead Salmon
Your cousin Trout has a Pout...
And now, so do you, as you lie there
On the buffet table.
A journey of hundreds of miles, upstream, against strong currents and rapids, starts with your first agile movement... and ends on the dinner table.
Oh! Dead Salmon;
I salute you with this Ode.
NUMBER NINE 7-27-09 submitted by Anonymous
Oh dear deceased Chum , 'tis such a mournful thing
That you were never loved like the Alaskan King
For it is his remains that conniseurs have selected
While your poor body has been quickly rejected
So now as I gaze into your vacant eyes
What your life was like , I can only surmise
But it must have begun with a spawning ritual
That would be for your parents, never habitual
With their bodies quivering next to one another
Your dad did his thing and so did your mother
So did they say to you, "Little Egg", before they died
"The sex was disappointing but at least we tried"
You hatched as an orphan with orphan siblings galore
And you grew and swam aimlessly not far from the shore
But did you wonder at all before your migration
What would be your journey toward self-actualization?
Was it perhaps in the ocean when you felt most alive?
Did you then wonder toward which goal you should strive?
Did other sea creatures laugh at you with mirth
When you decided to return to the place of your birth
Against many obstacles you struggled and won
You swam back to the place where your life had begun
But then you did that spawning thing and started to die
Preparing yourself for that sweet fishy bye and bye
But now your sad corpse lies on a food market shelf
Where a beautiful King salmon is compared to yourself
And a poor Chum salmon just cannot compete
In flavor, in texture, and especially in meat
Oh will you be remembered in your children's genealogy?
As a very inferior salmon in the world's icthyology?
Yet although you were rejected, you are not a total loss
Because you're really not so bad, with enough tartar sauce
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