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Husks by Ivan Young

October 1, 2013 Contributed By: Ivan Young

To understand the texture of sunlight she watches the gull
dip its bill into the opened chamber of a crab. It mauls

the meat into droplets, rich with rot and brine.
She thinks of swimming to a sandbar as a girl, the corset

of breath when the ocean floor dropped away, the burn
in her arms, the bewildered laugh when suddenly she could stand.

A  crab ached into cobalt and jade.  She thought she’d made
the thing scuttle, when she kicked the waves, off the edge

toward the deep, the way she’d felt herself fall some nights,
in sleep.  Nothing to do but swim, she dove back in the gap

of sea and muscled to the beach, where waves threw her
in an exhausted heap.  She counted the blue crab’s

cracked and whitened legs, the carapace.  Curled into a husk,
thumb and finger cramped into a V, she felt her mother’s hand

pecking at her tempered back  reminding her to stay awake,
while Sand Pipers twittered among the fragile, emptied shells.

Return to table of contents for Issue 7 Summer 2013

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: October 1, 2013

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The picture was everywhere. Seemed like every time I turned my phone on it’d beep and vibrate and ring until I turned it back off. Yo did u see? Hey are you ok? Was that ur friend? To all three, yes. The cop that shared the photo was suspended with pay. He takes a photo […]

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Sometimes the blue sky threatens, the lilac conceals some danger. But it passes like a cougar stalking among the boulders and deciding mysteriously to move on.  You don’t know, but something you did or didn’t do, saved your life. And what might have happened had you turned your back on this sunset, this rotting fence […]

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