The sign upon the café wall said OYSTERS: fifty cents
“How quaint” the blue eyed sweetheart said, with some bewildermence.
“I didn’t know they served such fare out here upon the plain?”
“Oh, sure,” her cowboy date replied, “We’re really quite urbane.”

“I would guess they’re Chesapeake or Blue Point, don’t you think?”
“No m’am, they’re mostly Hereford cross. . . . and usually they’re pink.
But I’ve been cold, so cold myself, what you say could be true
And if a man looked close enough, their points could sure be blue!”

She said, “I gather them myself out on the bay alone.
I pluck them from the murky depths and smash them with a stone!”
The cowboy winced imagining a calf with her beneath.
“Me, I use a pocket knife and yank ’em with my teeth.”

“Oh, my,” she said, “You animal! How crude and unrefined!
Your masculine assertiveness sends shivers up my spine!
But I prefer a butcher knife too dull to really cut
I wedge it in on either side and crack it like a nut!

“I pry them out. If they resist, sometimes I use the pliers
Or even Grandpa’s pruning shears if that’s what it requires!”
The hair stood on the cowboy’s neck. His stomach did a whirl,
He’d never heard such grisly talk, especially from a girl!

“I like them fresh,” the sweetheart said and laid her menu down.
Then, ordered oysters for them both when the waiter came around.
The cowboy smiled gamely, though her words stuck in his craw
But he finally fainted dead away when she said, “I’ll have mine raw!”

-Baxter Black