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Richard Fein |
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FISH OR CUT BAIT I cut bait, for I'm the quintessential maybe man. Worried indecision tightens my gut, constipating me so badly I can't even think of sitting on, let alone getting off, the pot. I ponder both probable and improbable possibilities, which makes me a big thinker but a small doer. My mind is a forum for an endless Lincoln-Douglas debate. My will fragments into civil war among my myriad selves. Amid the fraternity of movers and shakers, I'm a fish out of water or a fisherman over his head in water. But I have my place on the boat, for the craft carries more than a captain and fishermen. There's always my kind, trying to decide what bait to cut or to cut bait at all, and we do have our assigned positions. Our place, my place, is away from the railing and in back of the fishermen. The fisherman need space to cast their rods, otherwise hook, line, and sinker, tangles with hook, line, and sinker. So I, so all bait cutters, give fisherman wide berth. And when we finally decide to do something, to actually cut bait we can quickly run to the railing and bloody the water with our chum, making the sea boil with scaly mouths, which keeps the fisherman very busy. TATTOOED LADIES My first job was selling ice cream on the beach. I was a peddler in a sea of bare, sandy skin, and so I saw many rough men with eagles or sexy ladies engraved on their arms or shoulders. In those days, among women, only freak-show ladies dared sport such nonconformity. But the world is a freakish place. And on the beach were too many women with hideous blue numbers seared in their arms, which they proudly did not hide. Were it not for the accounting each evening, I would have gladly given away my vanilla and chocolate to them, and considered the sweets paid in full. Today, skin artistry is in vogue. The stylus is in fashion, especially among many ladies. Flowers are engraved on legs and arms, and blue designs sit seductively on the small of many backs. Tattoo is a homonym. Another definition is a sunset melody or a kind of taps, a lone bugle summoning all to return and rest. The number of ladies with numbers on their arms dwindles, soon it will be zero. I'll remember them. But today, let blue flowers bloom on human limbs and divinely beautiful patterns grace the skin on the backs of all ladies, and let those cruel numbers burned in flesh never again become the fashion. |