It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
The female mates only once with her mid- Atlantic blue. That doesn't mean this decapoda can't survive without him. True, before she's mature, she's carried under the weight of his shell, russet pincers scratching the surface of the bay's brackish floor as she stores him inside her to spawn over and over alone with her egg sac. But carnivore, omnivore, detritivore, claws crack clams to support a million minions tucked tightly to her carapace. Once winter's cold water comes, she burrows in the sand, insulating herself, isolating herself, a scavenging specimen in the salty estuary.
Paula Persoleo is a graduate of Stony Brook University’s MFA program in Southampton, NY. Her work has been accepted by Philadelphia Stories, Sheila-Na-Gig, Mantis, and Tulane Review. In 2018, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Beltway Poetry Quarterly. She teaches in the MALS program at the University of Delaware and works at a nonprofit organization in Newark, DE.
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Amazing poem. Fully descriptive in its spareness.