Southern Fried Catfish

                                    Or How to Disguise a Carolinian in New York


                                                                 INGREDIENTS


8 (4 ounce) catfish fillets                                            1 tsp cayenne (make it hot)
1 quart oil (sweated   from   a   road   stand           2 tsp pepper
shambled & split)                                                         1 pinch of garlic salt   
2 cups buttermilk                                                         ½ tsp onion powder
2 cups cornmeal, thick as silt                                    1 dash of Old Bay to make it pop
1 cup flour                                                                       1 cast iron skillet, seasoned till it shine
1 smidge seasonin’ salt                                               1 unrelenting hankerin’ for home  


                                                                  DIRECTIONS

1. Stroll up to your monger as he somersaults the brine-stink of the sea into an ice 
chest, ask him for two pounds of catfish & if his nose puckers like a pickled plum, 
he’ll call it  mud cat  or  polliwog  or  bottom feeder  of the bog. Pretend he ain’t 
talkin’ bout you.   

2. Soak fillets in buttermilk till the fish forgets it never was a fish. 

3. Combine cornmeal in a shallow dish with all your spices, remember your 
Momma’s hand heavy on the seasonin’ salt, lick a cloud of Old Bay off your 
thumb—your numb tongue prods your teeth like a crawfish castle. 

4. Heat the oil. Say it slow so it don’t gloss your throat. A whispered tongue-
twister—oil, boil, pin & pen—say it like you belong, then say it again.

5. Your first week livin’ in the Big City, you bought a dress: black, silver buttons 
down the back, & everywhere you went you smelled free. Now, before you walk 
the block to the bus stop, you pop into your closet, grab the dress, dab its hem 
to your carotid, profit from the prophet power cozying around you like an opal 
necklace—bread the catfish, shake the excess. 

6. Sing a little Stella. Fry the fish in batches. Tell the LORD he ain’t gotta move 
your mountains. (Move from them yourself.) 
Note: prod fillets till the bubbles stop, the catfish gold & fixin’ to float.  

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Diamond Forde’s debut collection, Mother Body, is the winner of the 2019 Saturnalia Poetry Prize. Forde has received numerous awards and prizes, including a Pink Poetry Prize, a Furious Flower Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award from Claremont Graduate University. A Callaloo, Tin House, and Ruth Lilly Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg fellow, Forde’s work has appeared in Boston Review, Obsidian, Massachusetts Review, and more. She serves as the interviews editor of Honey Literary, the fiction editor of Nat. Brut, and she lives in Asheville with her partner and their dog, Oatmeal.