Crustacean Dilemma
When we moved to Florida
I ate stone crab legs as if it
were o.k. I declared them
delicious one night to the
server. “Yeah,” he said. “No
guilt either. They snap off the
legs and toss the crabs back
in the water, and miracle of
miracles
the legs re-grow.”
I remember my stomach
revolving. In the last twenty
minutes I’d eaten about ten legs
pulled off live animals
that had endured torture.
So what if the legs grew back?
The server saw my face and
said, “Regeneration. It’s all
good. No life lost.”
Could I get on
that bandwagon?
Karen Loeb’s poems and stories have appeared lately in Big City Lit, Halfway Down the Stairs, Sangam Literary Magazine, Bramble, and Willow Review. Her writing has won the fiction and poetry contests in Wisconsin People and Ideas, and she was Eau Claire, Wisconsin writer-in-residence in the recent past. She leads a quiet life in Wisconsin writing, reading and gardening and is fascinated by mushrooms and raptors which she encounters whenever she steps into any wild land. Revenge stories that still capture her: Hansel and Gretel and David and Bathsheba. You can find more of her writing at www.volumeone.org
