How to Clean a Fish
By Merna Dyer Skinner
Silently, we stood waiting our turn behind a line of boisterous, back-slapping fishermen, inching our way to the marina’s only cleaning table— my mother grabbed the hose, sprayed away blood and fish guts left behind by the last guy, too drunk to care. She told me to pay attention— to watch her clean the first of our catch. How the fish I caught weren’t going to clean themselves. I recall the handle of her father’s knife, carved antler from a buck he’d killed—how it fit so easily into her palm. She slid the blade along the dorsal fin, sliced free the spiny stabilizer, flipped the fish over—handed me the knife for the beheading. Then, with one cleaver whack she hacked off the tail. I remember how the table shuddered— how I dared not. Taking the knife, she showed me where to incise a single slit along the belly, how to peel back the flesh, insert my fingers, pull out heart, liver, spleen—their smell, pungent as seaweed. I remember itchy fish scales scattering along my arms, into my hair, as I scraped each fish’s pearly skin smooth—the cry of gulls echoing beneath the station’s tin roof. Later, we grilled perch fillets over open fire— sting of lemon juice dripping into tiny cuts along my fingertips—I panicked when translucent fish bones caught at the back of my throat. I didn’t know whether to cough or swallow. How Mother, without looking up, handed me a piece of Wonder Bread—how she kept on eating, how silently she left cleaned bones on her plate.
Merna Dyer Skinner (she/her) is a poet and communications consultant living in Portland, OR. Her poems have appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, ONE ART, Rust + Moth, Lily Poetry Review, Quartet, and The Baltimore Review, among other journals, and six anthologies. Her chapbook, A Brief History of Two Aprons, was published by Finishing Line Press. Merna holds an MA in Communication Studies from Emerson College. She’s lived in six U.S. states, and traveled to six continents.
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I remember my father taught me that trick with bread, which supposedly neutralize fish bones. He still ended up in the hospital when a bone scratched the inside of his throat.