Savannah Crabs

Bluish and thirsty, packed tight as oranges,
they come from the coast in the iced trunk
of the blue Buick our aunt drives.p She's sunk
in thought of dinner and not the tinges

of dread that will stain her African violets
as she tends a back pain.p She does not think
of their mother, who'll die this fall under pink
bedclothes without a goodnight; the eyelets

of her gown will spell the Chinese words
for loneliness, lovelessness, white birds.

When our aunt and her passengers get to town,
my brother and I crouch by the crate,
poke slow ones with sticks. Two escape;
our parents chase them with tongs around

the garden, then dump all seventy-four
in the laundry-room sink. They scuttle and flip
like fat gymnasts; they amaze us kids.
We salt them, singing When it rains it pours.

They spit back curses: You'll ache; you'll smother;
you'll never be able to talk to each other.

My aunt has brought me a spiny, off-yellow
shell, big as my hand. It sits
on the dryer, where I forget about it
to watch the steamer, where waving hello

and goodbye, the first mute batch reddens
and still.p I think of my shell and go back.
out of it, welt-ridden legs grasp
no sand.p He's ugly, a hermit, threatening.

I peer in his house and read the prophecy:
You'll find joy, but you must leave the family.


From MIDDLE KINGDOM (Alice James Books, 1997)