bottomless seafood surprise

this is an all night all you can eat kind of thing the kind of thing that used to happen real late on a Friday night right after work when you’d stop off for happy hour and never make it back home the kind of thing that still can happen to a girl with an ok-for-now kind of job maybe she works at the bank and at the end of each day finds herself in bed alone dreaming of spread sheets balance transfers and night deposits maybe she works for a multi-national sinister petrochemical giant and spends her nights in bed alone dreaming about the ramifications of drilling rigs drilling bits drilling permits and off-shore oil spills or maybe she’s a waitress a waitress who is exhausted after another long shift at the family restaurant of your choice and on this particular evening after work instead of stopping off at the all-nite video store she goes straight home feeling uncharacteristically energized and adventurous and rather than watch another action-romance video while eating her usual lean cuisine she is seized with the sudden impulse to defrost a medium-sized frozen fish a kind neighbor gave her one 5th of July and cook it up and the prospect of an impromptu fish fry so late at night excites her creating an unexpected mood of festivity evocative of warm weather and a modicum of leisure time so she opens a nice cold bottle of pink wine throws on a Willie Nelson c.d. takes off all her clothes and ties on a little skimpy shiny pink vinyl apron that says ‘giddy-up’ across the front she then finds the largest skillet in the house pours an inch and a half of Wesson oil into it turns up the gas and gets it really hot then places the half frozen fish down head first into the pan the pink vinyl apron is soon covered with tiny freckles of scalding hot grease her bare skin also receives the sizzling spatter the fish vibrates in the hot oil it’s yellow one-eyed profile winks from the pan and through the sound of the fish frying in the smoking boiling oil she can hear the darkening fish whisper: “you and me we are different we are the same” the kitchen is not redolent of honey she opens the drawer takes out the biggest knife and begins to dance somewhere close by a hockey game means a lot to a lot of people but she doesn’t care she has fish to fry ‘o creel of bream ‘o scent of smelt ‘o tiny scrod that sucks the night ‘o rapture of the bottomless seafood surprise this is home this is where the fish fries this is where the fish dance let us wash our hands in goat’s milk and say a prayer to St. Vitus

@2019 Music Sal Cataldi Lyrics Mark Muro, Vapor Vespers, Gravi-N-Bizqit Music/ASCAP