Hung To Dry

Looking out my window watching dry Oklahoma
winds blow clothes off a clothesline.
I see salted fish, pegged in a row
hung to be dried, flapping in the wind.

A Chinese recipe, explains my roommate.
I wonder about what the neighbours
will think. She talks of deep frying
after they bleach.
To eat them eyes, fins, scales intact.

Winking in the sun, opaque eyes bulge
out of flat bodies.
Dessicated as dried
leaves in pages of a book.
With ribbed veins in translucent scales.

Paper-thin fins hold against currents as
fish drink in air with puckered mouths.
Wedge-like ribs straining to swim
upstream. And I wonder if she too is
swimming against the current.