An aproned man, mustache marine layer thick, rings the market bell. It clangs like a gutted echo or a foghorn occupied by drowning.
At lunch, I order the Dungeness crab, which sounds like a specific yoga pose.
It is time for soft flagellation, a little broken skin, pink rash of small loss, rosy tinge of budding humility but nothing more.
(When I cock my wrist, bend my elbow, the wrinkles form small parentheses.)
The coast cloaks itself in sheared foam, soft puffs of lost tickertape. Empty metal cages gleam. Puddles spread on dock boards, outline boot prints.
My liminal industry: hiding the ocean beneath its own waves.
Go ahead and try to convince me that I am beneath the clouds, these cataract evenings where sunlight is whittled into silver sinews.
These evenings too timid to even bruise.
Jason Fraley
Three Questions for Jason
What inspired your choice of genre and/or form for your work?
I’ve always been attracted to prose poetry, and I often enjoy deconstructing the form. In these two poems, I felt they lent themselves to a vignette-like form. They aim to preserve much of the prose poem structure—not line breaks, full sentences—but seek to avoid overmuch connective tissue. My hope is the vignette breaks add a surreal, dreamlike quality to each.
What was your creative process?
My creative process is mostly impatience! I get so little time to concentrate on writing. But in all seriousness, I normally write out my drafts in longhand on a legal pad. I’m at my best on a couch or my wife’s loft chair—anywhere away from a screen. I’ll keep at the first drafts until they contain the “heart” of the poem, complete with annotations, strike throughs, and various other embellishments. From there, I’ll move to my computer, transcribe, and hopefully be able to read my own writing. Often, I’ll ask my wife for editorial guidance, letting the poems sit a week or two into the process. (This is where my impatience shows!).
What is the significance of this work to you?
“[Scatter Seed. Starling Rain. I]" is a distillation of recent Ohio summers marred by wildfire smoke. I have hung several bird feeders to nurture goldfinches, jays, cardinals, woodpeckers, and other assorted songbirds (as well as entertain two indoor cats). There are times throughout the year, however, where starlings clot the feeders in squawk and their raucous chatter. Many of my poems attempt to capture a particular moment in the way I remember it, suburban adornments and all. I feel this one is faithful to that aim.
On the other hand, “[An aproned man, mustache marine]” is one of my many poems that recall the shore. I’ve also had an affinity for docks, rocky beaches, marine layer—anything that recalls a beach and the tides. The world unfolds differently there. This poem also has a hint of my professional life embedded (e.g., market bell), which I like to blend in to show that all facets of life can be poetic, albeit unconventionally.
Jason Fraley is a native West Virginian who lives, works, and periodically writes in Columbus, OH. Current and prior publications include Salamander Magazine, Barrow Street, Jet Fuel Review, Quarter After Eight, Mid-American Review, and Okay Donkey.
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