One more rewrite before I get around to posting new ish.
Blue Crab Claws
As he ate, blue crabs, fresh,
stripping glistening meat from
cracked claws with bared teeth,
his elbows grazed the shell fragments
gathering on the table like barnacles
stuck fast to waterworn, shipwrecked
wood: barrier island coral.
Pulling on a cigarette, he imagined
the smoke swirling around each tooth,
flavoring his tongue, gums;
he felt it in the mucus of his throat
that thickened in his lungs as he exhaled grey
ideas of slave cotton and civil war.
Pausing to steal a breath,
he realized that the air tasted like tobacco:
salty, smoky, Southern,
full of Bible quotes, barbeque, coleslaw,
dreams of flight, and pampas grass.
And as he cleaned the empty shells
from the wooden table on the porch,
he talked cream-colored sand, with hints
of pink and red, flaked brown with
shells and history and, finally,
some semblance of home.
