Raised in Hawaii and currently residing in Portland, Oregon, ALANA KANSAKU-SARMIENTO is a Journalism major and self-proclaimed "career explorer" ever since she jumped the journalism ship. She fished her first season in 2015, set-netting out of Nushagak bay and seining out of Kodiak harbor. She attended and spoke at her first Fisherpoets gathering in 2016. Her season 1 claim to fame is rounding up her all-female crew to go full monty on Fish Naked Day, the only crew in that area of the bay to do so that year. She happened to write a poem about it
AUDIO
2018 Fisherpoets Gathering
WRITINGS
Home
The ocean is not my home
And yet She is like a mother to me
Home is where mother is
The ocean is not my home
I cannot, with my nostrils, my lungs, my mouth, my blood
Pull the life-giving oxygen that my body needs from her waters as some other creatures can
Creatures that do indeed call the ocean home
Creatures that live in a universe that exists on this earth
But out of this world
A universe that our land-lubbing bodies cannot fully comprehend
But one that is intertwined with everything our land-borne selves inherently know
The cycle of life
Water, its foundation
From ocean to sky to body to ground to ocean to air to ground to ocean to sky to me
A universe that is foreign, that is dangerous, that repels me like a splinter out of flesh
A universe that draws me like a song
Deep space that lets you drift for hours on end
- If in fact time can be measured in the void
A universe where gravity does not seem to exist, then suddenly pulls with the warning of a
Perfect storm
As you draw near those planets, those stars, those black holes
A universe in which you can drift for a lifetime or you can be sucked in to
Rock or flame against your will
A universe that tosses you, but with the gentleness of a rolling wave
A universe that gives life, that is the very dust of life
A universe that takes life indiscriminately in its blackness, in its depth
The ocean is not my home
I am not a fish of the star, or jelly, or finned variety
I am not an urchin, crawling along the sea floor, feeding on the decay of my world
I am not a mollusk, soft-bodied and blind
I am not a crab, I am not a porpoise, I am not a shark, I am not a whale
I am a human, homo-sapiens sapiens
I walk on two legs and I swim with the ease of a creature that was born to run
The ocean is not my home and yet I am homesick for her
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We’re the coolest
The weather is cold as we disrobe
It’s Fish Naked Day! Or so I’ve been told
Excited I was, all spring and summer
But when the day finally came - oh! What a bummer!
The weather is chilly, the water is gray
A little too nippy for some on this day
But talk comes cheap, and we women are proud
After months of big talk, giving up’s not allowed!
We grab ice from our tender, all clothing in place
Then pull up to our nets, stony brows set in place
“It is time!” I declare
Taylor groans but commits
As I begin to uncover my pale, frigid tits
Bare feet are set on the aluminum floor
Asses are bared to the Nushagak shore
A cold pile of gear, laying lonely and stiff
With the salt of our work in the bow of our skiff
We heave and we ho as we pull up our nets
And others trade money from won or lost bets
Some drive extra far today as they pass us
Some drive extra close and put on their glasses
Wind and salt touch exposed shoulders and toes
Nothing but air covers us, floor to nose
Our catch comes aboard as we haul up the mesh
Slimy fish bits cover our flesh
We laugh and we hunch our shoulders in tight
To keep the cold at bay as we sample our might
Forty minutes pass by –
“It counts!” we exclaim
As we decide to put our clothes back on that cold day
A tip of the hat as a neighbor drives by –
A gesture for ladies from the classiest guy
Our skin all prickly from the cool Bristol air
We slip back in our gear, bums no longer bare
One thing we’ve discovered, along with the bay
We’re tough and we’re bold despite cold on this day
So remember us when 7/7 rolls around
Get naked and fish! Good catch will abound
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The body remembers
Muscle memory: The phenomenon in which your body is able to repeat a movement in exactness
Due to repetition
Do your muscles remember?
Mine do.
Sometimes my muscles recall the fondest of memories with a lovesick longing that can only be satisfied When my
Fingers and toes and biceps and shoulders
Grasp and touch and flex themselves into position -
Embracing that wonderful, lost motion once again
My muscles remember the burning sensation in my quadriceps as I
Pull a pair of heavy work boots out of the mud, one foot at a time
My feet have never felt so heavy, save for in my dreams -
Running in place with the bad guys in tow
There, in the mud, my muscles recall the sensation of a young child clinging to each leg
Telling me to stay
Monkeys in a tree
Cats on a trunk
One child per leg
Ten deliberate inches per step
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle
Right, left, right, left
I cannot go much further with these creatures
These monkeys
These kittens
These kiddos on my legs
My muscles are pulled back to the moment, shaking their minds awake as we find ourselves in the Nushagak mud
Attempting to move my Walmart boots
The clay sucking at my feet like a sloppy wet set of puckered lips
I am clumsy. I am cloddy. I am cloppy. I am sloppy.
I am all the nonsensical words that start with a “kuh” and end in a “y”
My muscles remember
As do my fingertips – oh! my fingertips, and oh! my palms
The feel of the flesh of the fish
My skin, my muscles, the bones of my fingers - all 28 of them - remember picking
And picking
And picking the fish
Out of their trap
And throwing, tossing, flipping them
Into the brailer
Beautiful arcs that the salmon used to make on their own
As they broke the surface of the water and felt the rush of air on their scales
Now, those glorious arcs are made cutting through the space between the sky and our aluminum skiff
An arc tracing the space between my hand and the brailer
An invisible dotted line leading from the ocean to the ice
Sometimes
Thousands of miles away by land
I am transported in a moment as my muscles recall and ache for that tedious motion
I can feel – I swear to God I can feel the fish on my fingers
Their fleshy fish bellies on the flesh of my fingers
I can feel it
I feel my index slipping under a gill plate
I feel another index sliding through a piece of mesh
I feel my bicep flexing as it throws the catch onto the pile
I can feel it
OH and as I sit with my eyes closed thousands of miles away in real space
My mouth parted, my back straight and my hands raised ever so slightly in the air before me
…Playing an invisible tune…
How I desire to feel it, not just in memory, but in the flesh once again
My muscles do not forget
Their memory carries me forward
A force stronger than those in the feet and calves and quads that carry my physical body
My muscle memory marches me onward
Do your muscles remember?
Mine do.
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