Evan Vandermeer
Survival
That horn again—a conch shell, I think. The man blowing it drifts around the pier, heading my way in a kayak piled with what look like personal belongings. The Jamaican water, so clear I can see my toes, laps against my stomach. It’s warm, like silk.
When the man—the old man—paddles up next to me, he gives a wizened smile and asks, “Wah gwaan?” I can see, now, that what I thought were his belongings are items for sale: ornaments, trinkets, knickknacks, most of them colored in the country’s green, yellow, and red. He’s not allowed on the resort grounds, but they can’t stop him from conducting business in the shallows full of tipsy vacationers. Nevertheless, a security guard strolls along the beach, watching.
I decline to buy anything, and with another kindly smile and nod he paddles off to the next stretch of beach. He hasn’t gone ten feet, though, before once again sounding the conch shell, almost as if he were off to battle.
after rain the hermit crab's too small shell
About the Author
Evan Vandermeer is a writer with poems published or forthcoming in Grand Little Things, Analecta, Kingfisher, Modern Haiku, bottle rockets press, Wales Haiku Journal, McQueen’s Quinterly, Presence, and hedgerow. He will graduate in May 2022 from the MA English program at Indiana University South Bend, where he lives with his wife, Megan.