221 Readings | 3 Ratings
A Crawdad'll Hold Until It Hears Thunder
Don’t speak
rudely to the dead, you whisper,
as if humor goes with the soul. Say soul is a crawdad scared
backward into the sawed half of a beer can
caught by drunk teenagers across the river. Say I’m a reckless carp for it,
color blind to its particular spectrum of red:
blood orange, bike rust, the cemetery
rose. You know walking past the graveyard plot named Slaughter
is a kind of peasant’s armor. Who could afford
such crypts?
And God bless the poetry on such epitaphs:
a giving person, a kitten in each arm. In medieval times poor archers
stitched lengths of crawdad carapace into breastplates
that were effective at stopping arrows
shot past fifteen yards. What did they do, then,
when death knows each scurrying
crustacean as a mask? Conqueror, ten-foot
money-shot. I’m an amazing,
fish-boned motherfucker for it. We’ll walk past,
laughing. We’ll return.
rudely to the dead, you whisper,
as if humor goes with the soul. Say soul is a crawdad scared
backward into the sawed half of a beer can
caught by drunk teenagers across the river. Say I’m a reckless carp for it,
color blind to its particular spectrum of red:
blood orange, bike rust, the cemetery
rose. You know walking past the graveyard plot named Slaughter
is a kind of peasant’s armor. Who could afford
such crypts?
And God bless the poetry on such epitaphs:
a giving person, a kitten in each arm. In medieval times poor archers
stitched lengths of crawdad carapace into breastplates
that were effective at stopping arrows
shot past fifteen yards. What did they do, then,
when death knows each scurrying
crustacean as a mask? Conqueror, ten-foot
money-shot. I’m an amazing,
fish-boned motherfucker for it. We’ll walk past,
laughing. We’ll return.
Posted 02/22/09
"A Crawdad'll Hold Until It Hears Thunder" was first published in FIELD.
