From “Fragments” by poet Amanda Cook (pictured above) of Gloucester, Mass., as published in late 2015 in the third issue of editor Joe Torra’s “Let the Bucket Down: A Magazine of Boston Area Writing“:
I was seventeen or fifteen or sixteen I don’t remember and I don’t remember if I was upset because I couldn’t figure out how to get out or because I was in the middle of getting out or because of everything that had happened but I was crying and it was morning and my mother came in and I needed her I needed her right then to tell me something to tell me it was alright and I was crying harder than I remembered crying I must have been fifteen because I cried harder when Galen died and I was crying so hard it was hard to breathe and my mother comes in and I say I need you and she looks at me crying she says get over it and leaves.
Below is Cook’s “Gloucester Poem,” which she wrote around 1995, before her marriage, when she was known as Amanda Porter:
Gloucester Poem
1. Sacred Cod
God made Gloucester
to fish.
Net regulations
are handed down
like commandments
and are broken as easily.2. A Legend
Howard Blackburn
rowed
until his fingers
froze off.
Modern day fishermen
sit in the
Blackburn Tavern
and drink
until their fingers
are numb.3. Statue
“To they who go down
to sea in ships”Olson (a foreigner)
described
the Man at the Wheel
as a god.He is just a man
at a wheel.
And there are lots
of men rolling bones
at the bottom
of the Atlantic.They take the cold
like real men
and do not turn
seasick green.4. Sea Salt
No prostitutes
in Gloucester.the women
are as starved
as men.They scratch and
claw and
tie down
whatever heat
they can get
their hands on.5. Port
Love
is
passed
through many hands–
it has been cut
twice
by each (
leaving scars
) less potent
and less dangerous
than the real
thing — heroin
is strong
and needles
piercing.6. Neighbors
they fight
downstairs
and on
the street
“why
don’t
you
suck
her
cunt.”7. Connections
my grandfather
the first pediatrician
on the island
has saved many —
brothers, daughters,
friends —
and many enemies.8. Colony
artists fester
in coffee shops and wharfs
sucking
the real life
out of real people9. Lanesville
Urksie
a drunk Finn
directs traffic
with the authority
of a warrior
or walks
with a lawn mower
and dog
looking for jobs
to buy
firewood.10. Our Ladies of Good Hope
They sit still
with candles lit
under Saints
hanging
from the ceiling
welcoming passersby
with blaring records of Elvis
and homebaked goods
praying to Peter:
return our sons safe
from the Second World War.11. Memorial
Each year
we drop
flowers
into the
water
under the
cut bridge
by the
barren
pedestal.
The statue
for the fishermen’s
wives
has
never
been
erected.12. Ropes
fishermen’s hands
are sinews
knots
rope burns
dead skin13. Jail
out the window
of the courthouse
you can see
beyond
the breakwater14. Exodus
Lane
Stuart
Hopper
Hancock
Sargeantdidn’t matter
15. Census
The roads
are paved
over cobblestones.
The canons
at Stage Fort Park
still protect
the harbor.
Over a century
the population
has stayed
the same.