Charlie Peck
Poetry
Charlie Peck is from Omaha, Nebraska and received his MFA from Purdue University. His poetry has appeared previously in Cincinnati Review, Ninth Letter, Massachusetts Review, and Best New Poets 2019, among others. His first collection, World’s Largest Ball of Paint, is the winner of the 2022 St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press and is forthcoming April 2024.
Bird’s Aphrodisiac Oyster Shack
In downpour-soaked sweatshirts, Jay & I sat at picnic tables in the broken-shell
parking lot, chipped paint & plastic pitchers, & devoured dozens of oysters raw
in their shells, a squirt of hot sauce or squeeze of lemon to cut against
the sun overhead, & both of us, Jay & I, unshaven & brain-fried,
lonely as fence posts, would watch the traffic on Bronough drip past.
Chelsea, server on Sunday afternoons with her always-wet hair
& tattoo sleeves, stood in the doorway of the kitchen with a cigarette,
scrolling on her phone, or squatted against the wall with her head
in her hands. She shifted temperaments like a Gulf Coast storm, swinging
between the simple kindness of joining our table for a beer after her shift
or walking away from us mid-sentence. In my head I can still hear
the shattering of shells as cars pulled in & out of the parking lot, like one thousand
broken bottles swept by a push broom across a factory floor. I love beer.
I drink it every day of my life. In Fort Collins, Colorado, I toured the Funkwerks
brewery & more than the sugar & yeast musk comes the sound of the dumpster
pouring shards into a garbage truck, all that broken glass falling in a rapid
wave of greens & browns, the noise clearing each bird from the trees overhead.
I’m embarrassed, today, of what my life looked like then: bare mattress
beneath the window, trashcan on the balcony filled with cigarette butts,
wide mirror above the bathroom sink that I stuck post-it notes on,
Do Better. Get oil change. At night I’d sit out on the balcony with the door open
behind me, listening to my dad’s Neil Young records, the moon an ugly man
looking down on me. It’s better now. I’ve got a ribeye dry-aging in my fridge
& a fresh can of shaving cream in my bathroom. On weekends I drive up
past the jail & park my car in the trees, walk down the rocks until I’m on the bank
of the river. Sandwich packed, two cold cans, a bucket of chicken livers,
I cast my line & sit with a paperback until tension breaks my reading
& I pull a catfish to shore. I lower its body back into the stream, feel
its slick skin against my own as it shudders once, then darts into the reeds.
“ Oysters are pretty gross if you think too hard, but there’s something magical about slurping up a raw one from the shell, some fresh-grated horseradish, lemon wedge, Crystal Louisiana Hot Sauce. I miss Florida until I don’t. ”