Recovered at last from their broken
marriages to Christ, they crabbed,
their hair plastered to their scalp
from years of compression by their habits.
The only strings they had left
attached to the necks of chickens,
they crabbed as gentle waves
slapped their dimpled buttocks
and frothed the creases of their lips.
The day’s catch completed, they kissed,
loosing the warm eels of their tongues
to swim the warm seas of their mouths,
luxuriating in the music of crabs
clacking in the bucket like plastic
rulers rapping the knuckles
of beautifully wayward youth.