Everyone’s a bloody
cheapskate
in Chesapeake Bay.
The tips are never
more than 1%. And that’s
if the service is good.
Value has no money
here. Dyslexia’s
overgrown
with rundown weeds.
In this burgeoning
mother of waters,
everyone’s donning
rags. They’re too stingy
to splurge on patches,
all thumbs with
needle & threads.
How this place
rejoiced
in the early
‘20s, the teens in holey
jeans. And now that
they’re out-of-fashion,
Bubba throws his
oysters off the boat,
loads its leaky deck
with a hundred-thousand
pairs of knee-less Lees,
haggled
from the bins
of Sally Ann.
And as for the love of
old tobacco—the ghost of
every Slave attests to that.
They say you hear the
coughs from Appalachia,
the stench from bad
cigars. They roll them all in sheets
of carbon paper. Used until
the Covid came to call. Then served
as masks with twist ties
for their ears. The face of one
and all stained midnight
blue. They’d wash it off
with soap but they are
frugal,
insisting that there’s nothing
like the brisk and salt of
sea to rub them clean.
Smelling like the
fish that they will eat
with every meal. Even with
dessert. See them in
Chantilly where every berry
should have been.
Andreas Gripp
March 12, 2025
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