Lynne Wycherley
Herring Girl
Lerwick 1920
The shore sways its gingery line.
In trios we are sent to our
one-room huts, a brown reek
oozing from the curers’ yard.
6 a.m. at the pier. Shouts
from the steam-drifters. Black
with oilskins, cormorants, we wait
in the rain by the farlin’s gully.
Now it fills. Stacked scales.
The twitch, slither, of two thousand fish.
Sleeves rolled, fingers bound,
we slice the gills, spare the milt
our knives working faster than needles.
Fifty a minute: we must not slow,
sma’s – matties – fills
layered, metallic, in a barrel
.
Working in threes, parodies
of the goddess. Later I dream
the moon is a fish, her slit-throat
children staring from steel rivers.
We are the untouchables
tainted with herring. Fiddlers
raise a tune. I laugh with the cooper
but his eyes stray seaward.
At night my salt-douched sores
cry red. I slit flour-bags
to bind my fingers, tighten
the knots with my teeth.
In trios we are sent to our
one-room huts, a brown reek
oozing from the curers’ yard.
6 a.m. at the pier. Shouts
from the steam-drifters. Black
with oilskins, cormorants, we wait
in the rain by the farlin’s gully.
Now it fills. Stacked scales.
The twitch, slither, of two thousand fish.
Sleeves rolled, fingers bound,
we slice the gills, spare the milt
our knives working faster than needles.
Fifty a minute: we must not slow,
sma’s – matties – fills
layered, metallic, in a barrel
.
Working in threes, parodies
of the goddess. Later I dream
the moon is a fish, her slit-throat
children staring from steel rivers.
We are the untouchables
tainted with herring. Fiddlers
raise a tune. I laugh with the cooper
but his eyes stray seaward.
At night my salt-douched sores
cry red. I slit flour-bags
to bind my fingers, tighten
the knots with my teeth.
Page(s) 38
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