The Horseshoe Crab
by Danielle Fontaine
After Russell Edson
Shopping for a husband, a woman falls in love with a horseshoe crab. Finding its shell sexy, she asks the shopkeeper for a closer look.
Lifting the crab from its tank he cries, A fine choice my lady! Please, feel free to examine it.
What a beautiful tail! A perfect 90-degree angle! She flips the crab over and runs her fingers along its legs. Searching for its ring pincher she asks, And you said this one has blue blood?
But of course! The clearest of cyan!
She tells the crab, That’s it my love, I have decided to buy you for myself!
In their wedding bed, the crab asks, Could you please turn me over? I’d like to see my lovely wife.
Speak up, I cannot hear you.
I said, could you please turn me over, I cannot see you!
I told you to speak up, I cannot hear you!
Could you please turn me over, I cannot move!
How wonderful you are, offering me your blood! Such a thoughtful husband!
Slicing into its abdomen, the woman continues her boasting. Sucking its innards, the woman stains her teeth. The crab goes silent. She tells it, I need to slip into the shower.
Later, in fresh lingerie, the woman returns to her husband, still on its back, atop azure soaked sheets.
Danielle Fontaine received her MFA in 2012 from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, runs regular summer poetry workshops, and is a creative writing instructor for UMB’s OLLI program. Her poems have earned honorable mentions in both the Writer’s Digest and the Academy of American Poets contests and, as a finalist, her poem “Bottle” appears in the Modern Grimoire Anthology. Her work can also be found on NPR’s Here and Now website as well as in Mortar, Breakwater Review, Front Range, and others. Her ghazal “Her Unequivocal Eye” is forthcoming in Otherwise magazine.