That Other Place A tradesman’s shout from fifty years ago nags at me, a fishmonger who’d appear on winter Sunday afternoons selling shellfish from buckets and boxes of ice in the back of his van.  When he stopped, he’d holler, Cockles, mussels!  Whelks ‘n winkles! in a voice that gurgled like a blocked drain and was thick as fog.  Then, loud enough to make sure we all knew he was there, he’d start ringing a big brass handbell that sat where the passenger seat would’ve been if he hadn’t stripped it out, on the floor by a pile of newsprint, bags, long tangles of string, his whisky and a wide-open jack-knife with a wicked-looking blade. Ken Head If you have any comments on this poem, Ken Head would like to hear them.