Crabbers for Dinner

If you’ve never had them over, hungry
crabbers fresh off the Chesapeake Bay,
it’s a spectacle, a show of sorts,
more fun than naked water-slide day
or more nauseating than Cy and Alice
at a buffet; it really depends on you.

They come off the water 20 pounds light,
hands gnarled, beards sprouting, jelly
on their clothes, from fish bait
not jam, but with the same snotty
consistency. They step onto the docks
like first-time travelers step off

the moving sidewalks at O’Hare,
unsteady and surprised by the stop.
They have a look in their eyes,
the kind that begs to be asked to dinner,
the kind that locals know to ignore,
the kind a Midwesterner who has farmed

from sunup to sundown takes pity on,
and so they are invited to dinner.
They come like The Walking Dead
come looking for brains, swelling hands
reaching for bread before everyone
is even seated. There is no washing

or waiting, or spoken grace,
only grabbing and biting and tearing
whatever is within reach
…whatever is within reach;
Guard yourself, seriously,
w-h-a-t-e-v-e-r is within reach.

When you sit with them, you cannot smell
the food anymore, only your visitors
and the wild itself, like sitting
in the backroom of Charlie’s butchery;
try as you might, you cannot unsmell it,
a violently-rotten vinegar-molasses-fishy

odor permeates the entire house, and you
will never — for the rest of your life —
ever get the smell out. These new visitors,
the ones you asked to dinner, are the only
guests who will visit you in the future.
Enjoy the show.