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Oysters

By Rafael CampoPosted Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2001, at 3:00 AM ET

Your concentration while you're shucking them
Is fierce; they fight against your prying blade,
As if intent to guard some plumbless gem
Of truth. I squeeze some fruit for lemonade;
The yellow rinds become a fragrant pile.
More scraping from the deck, a stifled curse—
You bring me one, the frilly muscle pale,
Defeated, silent in its briny juice
Like sweat expended in the effort to
Remain inviolate. I slurp it down,
One dose of aphrodisiac, and you
Return to your grim work, all Provincetown
Draped out below you, edge of the known world.
I see what is left: bone-white, hollow-shelled.

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Rafael Campo teaches and practices general internal medicine. He is author of The Other Man Was Me, which won the 1993 National Poetry Series Award, and of What the Body Told, which received a Lamba Literary Award for Poetry.

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