Poems By Gill McEvoy

Cooking Fish.

I have lived inland all my life,

got no further than sticklebacks

glowering in jam-jars;

never once ate trout.

Here in my newly-wed kitchen

this strange fish slips from my grip,

slithers and slaps against the sink;

it smells of foreign things.

The loose scales must be scraped away:

I curse as, sliding, it escapes again.

But soon the sink begins to fill

with pieces of silver; startling

sequins, starbursts, sail its lake,

hammer its surface with shimmer.

I regret my trooper’s cursing,

scoop one gently on a fingertip:

it clings, and winks and winks with light.

When you walk in - starving, as you say -

you find me lining out frail specks

of starlight on the drainer’s edge.

Peaches, North Carolina.

I remember peaches in baskets

standing on the burned-out yellow soil,

the thin rows of trees marking the line

from the eye to the horizon,

then back to the fruit in the baskets

that waited to be sold.

Everyone had peaches - pounds and pounds,

nothing but peaches,

sun-baked, sweet, and tempting,

standing on that mustard-coloured soil,

waiting to be sold.

And we bought! - drove home with the tropic

scent of peaches raging through the car.

Later that day the rattle of ice in the bucket

as the ice-cream makers churned,

the hot, hot fruit in the baskets,

cold, cold slice on the tongue.