Christina Olson

Blue Bloods from Issue 90

In the 1950s, scientists discovered that LAL (Limulus amoebocyte lysate), a clotting agent found in [horseshoe crab]’s powder-blue blood, binds to fungi and endotoxins, coagulating into a thick gel around such invaders. The result: a simple, surefire way to detect impurities in pharmaceutical drugs and medical supplies. —Wired magazine, July 2011

 

It’s a scene from a sci-fi movie that stars

only living fossils. In Charleston, the horseshoe crabs

are captured, folded in half, strapped

to stainless steel tables and bled. Hours ago,

they were plucked from the beaches too north

of Hilton Head to be popular. Now needles

drain their blue blood. Blue: copper,

not iron, chills their circulatory system.

 

Clipped to the table, crabs look like nothing

so much as army helmets. The chemical

leaked from their hard bodies will be used

to check the armed forces’ supply of medicine.

The blood is drained, spun; LAL, Limulus

amebocyte lysate. Street value is fifteen grand

a quart. Something borrowed,

something blue. If you have ever lain

 

in a hospital bed, IV dangling like a thought,

the crab blood vetted that bag.

If your father died two years ago this month,

all the drugs the doctors tried were tested

with this cold blood. On ancient vacations,

you flipped all the horseshoes you could find.

Once you planted your sandy foot in one’s back.

You waited for your father to yank you

but he shrugged: Only crab ain’t worth eating.

 

Later, in the hospital, you brought him

blue crabs you’d boiled in beer and Old Bay.

You asked the nurses to look the other way

while you held the meat to his lips, wiped

your freckled hands on the bedsheets.

He died anyway. Overhead, though

you didn’t know it then, the astronauts

on the International Space Station

reached for drugs made safe by horseshoes.

 

The living fossils will be bumped back

to the bay, released and dizzy.

They will recover fully, scuttle through silt

for another twenty million years.

We can’t say the same for the astronauts,

the soldiers, the cancer kids in the ward,

your father. You. Your blood runs too red.