after the painting by Van Gogh, 1889 https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gogh-two-crabs
Two Crabs
Fruits of the sea plucked along with the entire tree: a forest couplet, uprooted ingloriously. Their underbellies are floors of humus, twig, bark and seed, hodgepodge recipes. Do not stare there. See them as some foul plate from which you must find cleaver and lever out their meat. No worry of intrusion: you cannot inconvenience the dead. Instead, aim for the head, as such, and prise; one cannot taste without being for the kill. Bio: Colin Dardis is a neurodivergent poet, editor and sound artist from Northern Ireland. His latest collection is All This Light To See The Dead: Pandemic Journals 2020-21 (Rancid Idols Productions, 2022). His work, largely influenced by his experiences with depression and Asperger's, has been published widely throughout Ireland, the UK and USA, and shortlisted for the Erbacce Prize, Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing, and Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Award, amongst others. Previous collections include Endless Flower (Rancid Idols Productions, 2021) The Dogs of Humanity (Fly on the Wall Press, 2019, shortlisted for Best Poetry Pamphlet, Saboteur Awards 2020), the x of y (Eyewear, 2018), Post-Truth Blues (Locofo Chaps, 2017) and Dōji: A Blunder (Lapwing, 2013). His latest album, a long-form ambient piece, is Back To Work (1tracktape, 2021
Fevers of the Mind 