Adam Houle

Hand-Painted Hermit Crabs!

What slow art curled
in a hand-painted home.

The Myrtle Beach hermit colony
seems contemplative, lonely

at the center of a t-shirt store.
One shell is purple

with curved Viking horns
for a St. Paul snowbird’s kid

who sees now what vacation
means. It’s deathly cheap.

And they toss in a plastic cage,
a sponge, and a week of pellets, free.

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Adam Houle is the author of Stray (Lithic Press 2017), a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His poems have appeared in AGNI, Shenandoah, Baltimore Review and elsewhere. He currently lives in South Carolina, where he is an assistant professor of English at Francis Marion University.