~
FISH TACOS ARE NOT VEGETARIAN
Sunset found us with three pounds
of assorted summer squash, two
chef’s knives, and an impatient
crowd of metalheads on the other
side of the window. One wanted
to know if the al pastor had been
blessed by Jim Jones. I replied
Jones wasn’t available so we got
Marshall Applewhite, and that
seemed to pacify him. The boss
was less interested in the perfect
quarter-inch semicircle than he
was in two full containers and our
attention turned to the shrimp,
the walleye, the calamari,
the octopus, all listed on the menu
to the left of the window as vegetarian.
It never fails, at least once a day
someone orders seafood and is
compelled to let us know fish
does not grow in the ground.
If the boss is in, that person
sometimes gets chased halfway
down the block by a burly
half-Greek half-Puerto Rican
who screams obscenities
in a language he will not reveal
but I have come to theorize is
Estonian. The boss has good aim.
Almost every piece of octopus
he pelts people with finds its
mark. The folks who run
the art gallery across the street
have learned to take it in stride,
warn the patrons of their basement
shows that if you’re after walleye,
when you’re on this block in this
neighborhood, you better believe it
came from a wall, doesn’t have an eye.
~
Robert Beveridge
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Ephemeral Elegies, Pulsebeat, and Riverbed Review, among others.