Larissa Szporluk: Duressor

In darkness, crabs are believed to rest.
It is nobody's world. It is even less
theirs when they touch that first
inch of beach and the stunning blow
of elastic fire that is nobody's star
knocks them out of existence,
knocking them out like knees
in a murderous arena of tungsten lamps
and questioners. Of tables and pounding
fists. Of the decision of tide
to rebel against attraction, flattening out,
the moon looking up in surprise
from the underside of the stagnant water,
twisted and sad, like a coroner's eye
scrambled in a dearth of time,
the faraway body's insomnia, the crabs
combing the sand without minds.


From Dark Sky Question (1998). This poem shoulders the intense weight of making the action of the crabs equivalent to an action of the human mind: the two become as one. Its effect is almost phenomenological.