{"id":1553,"date":"2021-04-24T08:49:37","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T16:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/?p=1553"},"modified":"2021-04-24T08:49:48","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T16:49:48","slug":"elvers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/?p=1553","title":{"rendered":"Elvers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tonight men walk with flashlights beside the road,\ntheir cars parked at City Point by the bridge,\u00a0\nand I think they must be elvers. Men seeking elusive\u00a0\n\nglass eels. Green ferns pulled down beneath\u00a0\nmud and rubber boots, these men enter\nthe river where it ebbs and wallows, lugging\u00a0\n\nfyke nets, metal chains rattling like coins in pockets.\nTiny diaphanous offspring struggling in from the ocean,\ntransparent gold, enough to line the coffers of the most\n\nbalky of fishers. Men who scramble along the earth\u2019s\u00a0\nhard face, kicked by sun, maligned by rain, stuck\nin the throat of dirty snow. Determined. The ice melts,\u00a0\n\nwaters warm and their own sorry bellies pull them\u00a0\nto the river as surely as the young eels are called upstream.\u00a0\nTwenty six hundred dollars a pound. What does that equal\u00a0\n\nin hours spent wielding a saw in a damp woodlot or stocking\u00a0\nshelves at Walmart? Asians weep for this food, grow noodle\u00a0\u00a0\nthin American eels to adults and sell them at market.\u00a0\n\nThese Anguilla rostrata<\/em> will never see the Sargasso Sea,\u00a0\nnever turn yellow and plump in brackish water. Caught\nin nets, they turn in star-backed water like letters\n\nthat have lost their form, shift in this unnatural space,\u00a0\nno longer moving with the tidal stream. Instead, lifted\u00a0\nby calloused hands, they shine in picnic coolers shoved into\u00a0\n\npickup trucks, slosh against each other down pock-marked\u00a0\nroads on the way to docks and dealers. Their thread-like bodies\u00a0\na writhing promise, treasure held in red and white chests.\n\n\nWorcester Review\nVol. XXXVII No. 1 & 2\nFall 2016<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tonight men walk with flashlights beside the road, their cars parked at City Point by the bridge,\u00a0 and I think they must be elvers. Men seeking elusive\u00a0 glass eels. Green ferns pulled down beneath\u00a0 mud and rubber boots, these men enter the river where it ebbs and wallows, lugging\u00a0 fyke nets, metal chains rattling like … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Elvers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1553"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1555,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1553\/revisions\/1555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}