for Louis Asekoff
Mid-October,
Massachusetts. We drive
through the livid
innards of a beast—dragon
or salamander—whose
home is fire. The hills
a witch’s quilt of
goldrust, flushed cinnamon,
wine fever, hectic
lemon. After dark,
while water ruffles,
salted, in a big pot, we four
gather towards the
woodfire, exchanging
lazy sentences,
waiting dinner. Sunk
in the supermarket
cardboard box,
the four lobsters tip
and coolly stroke each other
with rockblue baton
legs and tentative
antennae, their
breath a wet clicking, the undulant
slow shift of their
plated bodies
like the doped drift
of patients
in the padded ward.
Eyes like squished berries
out on stalks. It’s
the end of the line
for them, yet faintly
in that close-companioned air
they smell the sea, a
shadow-haunted hole to hide in
till all this blows
over.
When it’s time,
we turn the music up
to nerve us
to it, then take them
one by one and drop
in the salty roil and
scald, then clamp
the big lid back.
Grasping the shapely fantail,
I plunge mine in
headfirst and feel
before I can detach
myself the flat slap
of a jackknifed back,
glimpse for an instant
before I put the lid
on it
the rigid backward
bow-bend of the whole body
as the brain explodes
and lidless eyes
sear white. We two
are bound in silence
till the pot-lid
planks back and music
floods again, like a
tide. Minutes later,
the four of us bend
to brittle pink intricate
shells, drawing white
sweet flesh
with our fingers,
sewing our shroud-talk
tight about us.
Later, near moonless midnight,
when I scrape the
leafbright broken remains
into the garbage can
outside, that last
knowing spasm eels up
my arm again
and off, like a
flash, across the rueful stars.
Eamon Grennan
