A SHRIMP’S BLACK VEIN
is its intestinal track. Likened to a vein as a tool of expediency, the alternative, crudeness. Never crude—I harbor a need for cleanliness that surfaces only in the way I hold my tongue. The thin ribbon along a shrimp’s back is also called a sand vein. Strange how quick we move to disguise unwanted information. I gather facts by the fist-full—like: each shrimp is a mood ring. White shrimp live in low-salinity environments; red shrimp gorge themselves on krill. Crustacean or not, we bare ourselves to the world universally. Another fact: the sand vein is either partially or fully filled with what a shrimp has eaten, thus processed, in a day. The easy way out: A body is at once its past, present, and future. Brimming. The hard way through: A body is a processing machine. –Is this all too much? this task of proving care, of explanation & information, fruitless? Shrimp blood pumps external, their circulatory system on their sleeve. I am thinking of harm. The shrimp and its external inner body, its blood and shit in the open. I am thinking of harm. Bleeding-heart syndrome. I am thinking that I am a poor caretaker and have been all along. My efforts to keep clean are nixed: the shrimp’s black vein is completely edible. The tragedy of carrying-on continues. Removing the vein is easy —take a knife and slice downward— but the body, severed, only allows bloody acts the grace of approachability: but none of the ease. Is it all about keeping one’s mouth clean? Is the metaphor about gut- health? about micro- biomes? bio-functionality, bi-directionality, biting, gnashing, or gnawing?— all the same question, all the same answer. I think on this poem for a year, as if I don’t already know the answer.
Bars fr