Turn

Turn

Turn

      A bright-hot morning; me and Daddy; a fever-cloud of 
glassy-eyed iridescent flies. Up ahead, invisible heat-devils 
waver over our (brownbottle) boomerang of river; our 
rank-pink curves of bait-bucket chicken-neck marinate, and 
jellify, and stew.
      We are walking the oyster-shell zig-path from my 
blood-home to the water, three hundred and eleven 
crunch-steps from back door to dock. This is Daddy’s day off, 
our day for blue-crabbing. That neon hum you’re hearing? 
—The colored jinks of flies.
      They’re all here today, every local-grown species, every 
flying insect with a taste for something spoiled: heavy-hipped 
houseflies and hairy-chested horseflies, bloated bluebottles,
glossy greenbottles, dirtspeck-tiny screen-huggers too 
high-strung to swat. One minute back, they were hovering 
hairnet- (and halo-) style above my bald-headed daddy; now 
they are down-diving, and landing, in dark clots and clusters, 
on his eyebrows, neck-bones, knees.
      Ninety-nine.
      Along in here, our switchback crumbles down to 
shell-shards and powder.
      One hundred.
      His breath comes out vinegary when he turns.
      Now he’s the stagger-legged man, sun-squinting facing 
me so his eyes draw tight and Japanese like Mama’s. He is 
fishing through the fly-fog for my name.
      Romey-boy . . . he tries saying, slow-slurring it long, long, 
until the word-sound goes strange in the air and bends back 
on itself, like a shell-road or a river.
      Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight. Ninety-seven. The sand-bar 
has shown up (and shone) and I’m home-headed; that’s my 
crab-net, and my lunch-bag, and my yellow fly-blown 
bucket, dragging there behind me like a ruined foot.