postcard from London

Still Life with Crab Meat Can
Originally uploaded by efo.

A Green Crab's Shell

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this--
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.


A poem by Mark Doty and a gift from Corydora, a Flickr friend. The poem was read this weekend at the opening of Alchemy, an exhibition of photographs by Corydora, embleton and bhikku (aka Ilene Sterns, Alex Foord and Nigel Britton) at Sutton House Gallery in London.

Wish I were in London.

Ramones Karaoke has posted photos of the event »


Alchemy at Sutton House Gallery
2 & 4 Homerton High Street, Hackney
London, London E9 6JQ