Hemingway Dines on Boiled Shrimp and Beer
I'm the original two-hearted brawler. I gnaw the scrawny heads from prawns, pummel those mute, translucent crustaceans, wingless hummingbirds, salt-water spawned. As the Catalonians do, I eat the eyes at once. My brawny palms flatten their mainstays. I pop the shells with my thumbs, then crunch. Just watch me as I swagger and sprawl, spice-mad and sated, then dabble in lager before I go strolling for stronger waters down to Sloppy Joe's. My stride as I stagger shivers the islands, my fingers troll a thousand keys. My appetite shakes the rock of the nation. The force of my fiction makes the mighty Gulf Stream.
From Florida Poems by Campbell McGrath, published by HarperCollins. Copyright © 2002 by Campbell McGrath. Reprinted by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.