An excerpt from
Fault Line
by Laura Lush
The first step is green. Tin-taut claws
across the sand, the tide pushing and pulling
the lip-disk out of the water.
Later, it learns to grab at the dead and the living,
at the dull and the glittering.
Its Buddha mouth always searching.
It learns constancy: the way stars hook the same
sky night after night, the way love comes
a luminous slash to the throat.
It grows more earth-weary with age,
its fastidious crab-armour shining
with all the heliacal battles of the world.