Cod Block: fish fillets – skinless, boneless, with the pin bone removed –
pressed together into a block (19" x 10" x 2.5") weighing
16.5 pounds and packed into a master carton of four.

Newfoundland Quick Freeze made it,
more of it than anybody in the world.
Their two dozen plants were perched over the rough coves
and bays of Newfoundland

All there was to know about cod block I learned
that summer – the making, the selling,
the places it landed after that.
But the world lost its appetite for the stuff –

* the three poems by Richard Brait – “Cod Block – St John’s, 1981,” “Fish Frames,” and “Serving the Prime Minister” –  are available, in their entirety, in the printed version of the current issue


Bio:

Richard Brait is a corporate lawyer living in Toronto. He is completing his MFA in Poetry at Bennington College. His poetry has been published or accepted by TickleAce, Queen’s Quarterly, EVENT, the New Quarterly,  Exile Quarterly, and the Dalhousie Review. He was shortlisted for the Fish Anthology Lockdown Prize in 2020 and is the 2021 winner of the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition for Emerging Writers.

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