The pope said alligator was a fish

I’m a bad Cajun, me.
The archbishop wrote a memo,
the flesh does not count as meat.
The sea is not the land.
This—the discursive loophole,
it’s in the fish family, after all,
according to the memo
sent out of New Orleans.
My roommate asks me to describe
alligator. It’s like chicken,
I pause, but chewier
I wouldn’t eat chicken either way.

Our history, a rarely told story:
Forty-nine fishing ships
from La Rochelle.
My LeBlanc, our Godet,
in Port Royal, 1650,
ripped fingers to marshland,
harsh winters, and pelts.
Fishing food, fishing village,
fishing family, and later
thrown into sea like fish.

I spent years as a vegan.
Moved away from home,
moved to locked land
to slowly suffocating waterless.
Developed daily practice,
established clear connections
with the beyond.
Herbs, candles,
a drop of blood (here and there).
Suddenly couldn’t be vegan anymore.
Too much ancestral veneration:
I felt her, my Mamère Braud,
telling me just eat the damn fish.

Acadian first family names
meant little when everyone
shivered breathless only
in rags thick fog,
no sun, extended arms,
mouths chanted rosary.
Ships pulled out to sea.
Some sank, returned
to ocean floor, to befriend
fish—special bottom feeders.
Cages, keys, locks, chains,
Seven Years’ War and a chance
to embrace sub-tropics.
Mouths still chant rosary.

When my grandmother
asks about church,
I change the subject.
I don’t want to hear
a homily about a god
who watched us die.
Don’t care to hear
that god had a plan
to make us a diaspora.
But, when the pope says
alligator is a fish,
I’ll listen to him.

Emily M. Goldsmith (they/she) is a queer Cajun poet originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana who attends the University of Southern Mississippi as a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing. Previously, they received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Kentucky. Emily is one of the managing editors of Giving Room Mag. Their work can be found in Fifth Wheel Press, Pile Press, Hecate Mag, Fine Print Press, Witch Craft Mag and elsewhere.