No one will ever be as beautiful
July 10, 2011
Co-winner Ully Hirsch/ Robert F. Nettleton Poetry Prize
Published: April 22, 2010
Before you eat a crab, you have to tear
his lungs out, one-by-one like rotten teeth
or in a heaping clump, hands full of bare
organs. You have to force your knife beneath
his testicles and pull, suck the mustard
from the grey walls of his intestines. You
can eat them if you don’t mind clustered
springs of white glue tightly bound, clinging to
your molars like soft caulk. Twist eight legs from
their sockets, suckle the muscle that hangs
from each broken shoulder. Press your strong thumbs
to his belly and break vertically. Bang
the spiked mallet against dismembered limbs,
meat stuck under your fingernails like soil.
Daughter, remember this animal swims
even after it falls to scalding oil.