The speaker begins with a plea, "please let's not pretend we don't know," and then spends the poem listing the things "we" pretend. The dead salmon seem to stand for something larger that people would rather not admit. The imagery suggests a city that has quietly lost something, and the speaker is tired of the polite silence around it.
The poem turns on small, odd comparisons. Fish laid out at Pike Place Market become gutted, sun-bleached bodies. Unzipped jackets on fake grass shine like fish skin. The Space Needle, as I read "our needle," is denied any deeper meaning, neither ironic nor pointing at heaven. The last lines bring in the speaker's father, who never said Seattle is "god's country in summer," as if that comfortable story has been dropped.
The mood is uneasy and wry. The speaker sounds grieving, sharp, and a little ashamed, as though the city's pleasant surface hides what it can't look at.