~
Coconut Crabs Unpack Amelia Earhart’s Body
They went at it like mechanics, those grease monkeys
from yesteryear that you see in old films from the fifties,
who all rushed out once the car tripped the garage bell
& courtesy chimed its way into the post-industrial scene.
One did the petrol, sticking the nozzle into the car’s steel
holster, leaving the hose cocked like a cowboy’s elbow.
Another cleaned the windshield, a quick spray & wipe
to clear the resinous insect bodies that had built up on
the glass’s thick wall, like structure in a hive. One more
checked tires for nails & pressure; inflating rogue white-
walled rims to rise like a snowman’s gut. The last tested
oil & water, studying the radiator for defects; apostrophes
of rust indicating holes in the tank. Coconut crabs were
static on the morning she crash-landed onto the shore.
Waves had been busy tearing apart her silver Lockheed
Electra E10 like a stray cat shredding Christmas tinsel.
The progenitor of the demi-boy, her stout flying cap
buckled under her impish chin, goggles, attic windows
that jutted from her forehead’s square fixture. Her leather
jacket wet & dark as a fur seal’s skin. She was a born flier,
with a delicate touch on the stick, but she’d run out of airstrip.
Her downed fusillade dumped by the sea caused a loud
vibration throughout the network of thigh-sized tunnels.
Sand crystals amplified the distress beacon tones. They
emerged like veterans from a foxhole poking their heads
up after a bitter barrage. Helmeted faces grim; the fixed
bayonets of their claws in the slow charge to her corpse.
Their gritty reputations intact; pounds per square inch of
pressure that crack open coconut shells in a finger-snap.
Years later an experiment with a feral pig revealed the
identical strategy; the sea-moss lined bonesaws that got
to work quickly & salvaged what they could before the
tide returned to lap her up. The recovered parts; wheels
& props, rudders & struts dragged underground to be
reused. Her twin engines entombed. An engineering
feat; her frame perfectly recycled like her plane’s
aluminium skeleton would be four years later,
in that franchised crab-feast of the Pacific War.
~
B. R. Dionysius b 1969 in Dalby, Queensland, Australia. (He/him/his) has since lived in Melbourne, Ipswich and Brisbane where he is an English teacher, was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival and in his spare time watches birds. He has recently published work in ACC Progenitor Journal, Blue Earth Review, ginosko literary journal, Juste Milieu Literary Review, October Hill Magazine, Remington Review, Sobotka Literary Magazine, Sky Island Journal, The Mystic Blue Review, The Electric Rail, The Cold Mountain Review and was short-listed in the 2017 Montreal International Poetry Prize.