I
In ethanol, the chitin of a crayfish fades,
a carapace of rubber and silk.
Its joints articulate, tail spreads under pressure, uropods from telson
under a microscope, the jaggedness of its mouthparts, a question.
The lab is silent as I inspect ten-legged aliens, door open for fumes.
Is preservation respect for the dead?
II
November, I am split, cephelothorax cracked and my innards exposed;
the crayfish lab is open, wide enough to scurry in.
My professor wears pearl earrings, Hyriopsis schlegelii;
Emma is dead.
Keys pressed in my hand, teeth coarse, uneven, an answer,
Be as busy as you need.
Janitors whistle in the hall at midnight, so I don’t startle when the door opens.
Trash empty, get some sleep kid.
The dead aliens do not speak;
pink sunrise lends them the specter of rusty shells and coral swimmerets.
III
Orconectes rusticus, native to Kentucky,
crossed the continental divide to the Ohio River watershed,
borne in a fisherman’s bucket.
What journey would that be?
Excised from your life by rough hands,
your friends, strung up as bait, vanish.
Dumped into a new stream, alone.
Did they mourn?
IV
Ecosystems collapse, streams stripped clean of algae, fish, insects,
a river-shaped void.
Even as they crossbreed,
Orconectes sanbornii is outcompeted by rusty invaders.
Evolutionary survival, the passage of genes
to future generations;
a poor measure of life.
V
Dust coats azure sky, endless corn to the left, soybeans to the right.
We stop the van at a culvert.
Between rocks, in the riffles, the species roam.
Barehanded, I can catch Orconectids.
Left spooks them backwards into my right.
My grip solid on the carapace, a chela swings to pinch my thumb.
Iron smell in the mud. I bleed, rust red on the river stones.
VI
Captured, I break off a leg segment and release my crustacean.
Each leg deposited in cell lysis solution. Each molt brings new legs.
It survives. Do crayfish feel pain?
In the tarot, the crayfish represents greatness, our higher calling.
A tray of legs on the passenger seat, I listen to the wind in the corn,
drive until dusk, moon peach-ripe on the horizon.
VII
The limbs—in blue, fingertip-sized test tubes—like a memory
fragmented.
