Swamp Fat after Candice Lin

BY ROBERTO ASCALON

The first of us big knuckled, tightknot, rope muscle, salt-gnarled bodies wrapped in oyster raunch & salt scale.

Memories waterlogged. Home now drowned in spartina grass. Anaerobic history spat out a new America riding high above miasma gruel a brotherhood on stilts fish rich on the flood tide. Mud-clutched at our missteps swung ember alligator eyes fluorescing night with hunger floating over the dark water in our direction. Yet we leapt light across shit-thick tannins, waters dark as skin barefoot, same way we Shrimp Danced quick-step, head down, cracking crustacean shells bare-soled.

Arm-in-arm. We brigands. Knee deep. Thick like that. Like free folk, beyond the census gamblers all. Cantadors, too

At least a few of us sang

Número cuatro; La casa del gato

Seis con su nuéve; Arribe y abajo while burning the dark smoking the night away with fish fat lamps only to get up early to kneel before the sea before wrapping our swollen lips around a mouthful of santa maria. But on the boat we prayed san thermos until we consecrated san malo as home above popping percolating mud.