Pike Place Market Variations
Like luck, this cobbled street is short, runs one-way,
And ends abruptly – before you reach the harbor,
Where a young man believes his luck will turn
And the seafarer studying his charts
Will tell you luck, like the weather, is a language
Foreign to the landlocked. Yet since the public
Market this morning is awash in sunlight
Instead of rain, shopkeepers count their blessings,
Like change. One hovers near the register
-- A moon drawn by its tides; another dreams
Of moving to Peru; and Sol, the ancient
Fishmonger, oiled and scaled and glistening
In his rubber apron, spins like a new coin
Around Elizabeth, the Flower Lady,
Who clubs him with a bundle of narcissus
And, laughing, soft-shoes toward First Avenue.
The salt wind rises with the tourist trade.
And panhandlers assume their posts, their lookouts.
And the yacht sails fluttering on the Sound
Resemble moths flushed from a sweater drawer.
Down at the waterfront, three travelers
Boarding the ferry bound for the Inland Passage
Trust the drunken captain and his crew
More than the sea, the weather, and their luck
* * *
The revolutionists in the Left Bank Books
Discuss arthritis, another enemy
Sowing its seeds of toxic waste and fire:
What X-rays show, how blood tests work, and why
Joints twist -- the burning, the gnarled dance…A man
In fatigues cracks his knuckles for his comrades.
A woman with a spike of black-and-white
Hair winces, like the bellows of an accordion.
U2 supplies the music, style, and weather.
Illness is a metaphor, asserts the student
Activist, sticking his pencil in the fan
To stop the blades; while the cash register
Hums on the counter, registering nothing,
Like the clerk locked in his spasm of regret.
In here the customer is always wrong.
That's why the nun and the industrial
Hygienist who met by the Translation shelf
Sidle to the door, exchanging scowls --
And why the classicist appraising poems
For his masseuse would rather be a roofer
Than go on teaching Horace to the young.
And their best seller? A thick manual
On love and war in which the ink is thawing,
Smearing the writer's thesis and his name.
No sign of Celan's ghost, that fugal master
Of silences still floating down the Seine,
His death another message in a bottle.
Nor will you find the works of visionaries
Like Rimbaud or Apollinaire. No one
In here speaks French. And the coffee pot is gone.
Outside, on the remaindered table: Che
Posters, The House of the Dead, New Directions
Anthologies, French bread, embroidered shorts,
A legal brief, a wadded handkerchief
Containing subway tokens and the spent
Seeds of a soldier from the Russian front…
The Chinese merchant from the corner shop
Coaxes a paper snake out of his pocket:
It slithers through a hooker's legs and in
The gutter suns itself; it coils, uncoils;
Strikes at the lamppost; disappears. The hooker
Grins. A cardsharp sniggers, picking his teeth.
An Eskimo on Mad Dog Twenty-Twenty
Wipes froth from his split lip and, reeling after
A Texas banker, blazes a trail to the street.
* * *
Luring the lunch crowd,
The street musician rattles
Against his body's locks
And bars a bent soup spoon.
How he plays the buttons
Pinned to his vest and jeans --
McGovern, Eagleton,
Et cetera -- like steel drums.
And tattoos his tattooed arms,
Trading on his skin, like a stripper --
Ankles and elbows, cheeks
And brow. He spins and spins.
Vasectomy! he croons,
Then rings his cracked teeth.
A shoal of hungry people
Drifts toward him. It only hurts
For a little while . . . A woman
Tugs her husband's sleeve.
Smiles. A cop nods on his way
To sleep. The people sway.
A blind girl runs her fingers
Through the singer's hair,
The top hat at their feet
Netting grace notes and silver.
* * *
Praise the artisans arranging and rearranging their displays-- the converted bingo tables
lining the corridors and colonnade, all the spaces covered with their handmade wares.
Praise the maker of music boxes, that hoary man tattooed from head to foot: his indelible
snakes, wound round tree trunks and women's legs, are crinkling, shedding their skins,
his skin; while from his little boxes come the airs and partitas of Bach.
Praise the painter of neon Mt. Rainiers and his chain of canvases throbbing like gashed
thumbs, this bottler of volcanic ash from Mt. St. Helens in love with Mars, magenta, and
the windsock sewer from Savannah -- the woman with the crew cut, whose hanging streamers
twist in flames of silver, cobalt and crimson, singeing the air.
Praise the young man with the raven perched on his shoulder, the unemployed actor who gave
up waiting tables to learn by heart The Collected Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and
then recite them to the crowd under the awning (though they prefer the troupe of mimes
assembling in the street, the men and women dressed in black, whose dumb shows and
charades leave tracks in the air -- a spoor to follow into the invisible world).
Praise the beekeeper rubbing honey into her ankles and wrists; the man with the green
tongue -- the realtor-turned-herbalist and spokesman for poultices; the carver of wooden
toys and flutes, whose pinwheels will charm a boy even as his squeaky trills drive his
customers away; the slender woman singing "Desperado" to the runaways in the
alley; and Richard Hugo, who found the primal source of poems: wind, sea and rain, the
market and the salmon, and thus became a source himself.
Praise all the brick-a-brac of scrimshawers, driftwood etchers, collectors of bright
shells and curios; and the vegetables gleaming in their baskets -- the Walla Walla sweets
sprung from their earthen cells, the madder taffetas of romaine lettuce, the corn shucked
just enough to tease, the cherries split by rain, the greens and green; and the aroma of
Market Spice Tea sweetening the aisles down which bus-loads of retirees shuffle, their
pockets lined with pull tabs lifted from reservations in Arizona and New Mexico; and the
salt wind that will blow this all away.
And, remembering the boy in the sleeveless jacket -- how he hustles businessmen by the
arcade; and the pregnant girl by the fish stand, picking scabs from the tracks on her
arms; and the hobo who drags one leg, like a duffel bag, toward the train yard; and the
migrant workers in Wenatchee -- the first to taste our poisoned apples; and the crews of
the overloaded crab boats that topple in the Bering Sea and disappear; -- remembering them
(and others, many others), praise those artists relegated to the open-air stalls, who bask
in the sun, then huddle together in the wind and rain, like the bagmen shaping our routes
through the Market.
* * *
O savor of salt
and salmon -- the holy
And nomadic chinook
neatly filleted in ice;
The king and coho
caught by a troller
Or gleaned from a gill net,
gulls circling overhead;
And loaves of baked bread
steaming in waxed bags,
Salt-rising and sourdough,
the settlers' legacy;
And green onions, garlic,
goulash, and gazpacho;
And sweet-and-sour pork
simmering in the pot
Of the Chinese cook;
and chutney; and chocolate;
And lemons and loquats;
and loganberry jam;
-- All gathered up and garnished
in gusts of salt air!
The fishmonger, fattened
on fried clams
And beer batter,
brandishes his knife
At the cat on the counter.
A woman in culottes
Buys ferns and freesias
at the flower shop,
Then roams around
the crowded block, reading
Menus, a mark
for the moneyed and the saved.
A futures trader tickles her
until she turns away.
A Moonie hails her,
and she hurries home
To sear and sauté
for someone new.
O nights of white wine
and high winds!
O curry, and cayenne,
and sweetened cappuccino!
* * *
Here's how the day draws in its nets: schooners,
Purse seiners, customs agents -- all converge
On the sea wall protecting Ballard; sieves
In the Pacific tighten their long lines
And strain the water, trapping sea birds and seals
For the connoisseurs of squid; the radar snares
Widen to catch the clicking of the gears
And meshes in the warships near Malaysia;
And the sun shreds the clouds on the horizon,
Sinking into the future -- or the past.
Aboard the listing Walla Walla, the ferry
Stalled in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, nervous
Passengers scan the deep for whales, and the crew
Applauds the antics of the gulls and grebes.
The captain has his own agenda: Skål!
He mutters to a paper bag and sways
Behind the wheel. In the log book he writes:
Who will salute the sun when I am gone?
Then falls asleep . . . Untie the captain's shoes,
The first mate cries, and make him swim to shore!
Back at the Market, tattooed with swastikas
And armed with nightsticks, skinheads are goose-stepping
In time to music only they can hear,
Taunting the mimes and Eskimos, afraid
Of no one but the truant officer.
A woman with a bomb in her rucksack
Clutches the rainbow-colored sail she lifted
From the sail shop and steers away from them.
Behind the dumpster she will plant her charge,
Setting the homemade timer for tonight.
* * *
Dusk, and a man in a tin space suit selling real
Estate -- one-acre lots on the moon: Drilling rights!
Certificates! A tax shelter! The Flower Lady
Gives away glads. Sol packs a salmon in dry ice.
Two bagmen look for blankets in the dumpster, wards
Of the weather who will sleep tonight in cardboard quilts.
The artists collect their wares, the cardsharp files his nails,
And the spoonplayer rubs his blackened jaw, his silver.
Streetwalkers, like night-blooming flowers, suddenly
Emerge. A drunken couple waltzes up the block,
Believing their good luck will never change. The sign
Above them -- MEET THE PRODUCER -- reels in the first stars.
Christopher Merrill (formerly
of Seattle)
Copyright ©
"Pike Place Market Variations" was originally published in the
author's collection, Watch Fire, published by White Pine Press (1994)