Craving the smell
creosote deck boards
of salt, mothballs
I shake the oyster shell
from my rusted crab trap
the shell’s missing half
bottom. If I find it,
its hinge, restore
to wholeness?
my shell reeling teal
Saturday night
mangled by a propeller
talk healing.
is shucked, its attachment
leaving a scar of yellow,
The waiting room full
the baby is blue
fluorescent lights flicker
the tide ebbing
my oyster shell
of dock in the morning
baked into stink
after an ER night shift
snared by the current
A young ER doctor, I imagine
burnished by the river’s
can I mend
the oyster halves
Razored fringe, its empty lining
to pink in sunrise.
while I suture his hand
an oysterman and I
Doc, when an oyster
to shell is gashed,
purple, even black.
another gunshot wound
I drink yesterday’s coffee
night feels forever
crab trap gaping
its wounded beauty.
Ann Chinnis is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, 2025, two times Best of the Net nominee, semi-finalist for the Virginia Poetry Society: Edgar Allan Poe Prize, and the author of three poetry books-Poppet, My Poppet, I Can Catch Anything, and Love Song: Port & Starboard (forthcoming). Her work has been published in Sky Island Journal, River Heron Review, Gyroscope, Crab Creek Review, among others. Ann is a retired Emergency Physician and a leadership coach and lives with her wife in Virginia Beach, Virginia.