please let’s not pretend we don’t know
what it means when all the salmon have died
nobly. that we are only just now discovering
their bodies in Pike Place Market
gutted, splayed, sun-
bleached with early afternoon. that when
the sudden season came over us, displacing
we did not ask the mountain to turn its back
or compare the streets to veins. that we
did not see at the unzipped jackets, gleaming
on plastic grass, and remind ourselves
of fish skin. how acceptable we are.
that our needle is not ironic, or a finger pointing
always skywards. that my father
did not say seattle is god’s country in summer.
