Brian Baumgart Gammarus We discover them, coughed up by geese, deposited on old deck boards, ancient gods risen from beneath the sea if the sea were a shallow pond in Minnesota. Tiny, they fit, dozens in the palm of my hand, pink aliens on pink flesh, soft from winter. In dreams, they burrow in, flipping tails through veins and arteries, blessing my heart with bowed antennae. Grass shrimp, some say, when I describe the curled body and warriors’ armor, an appellation undue the miniscule knights popping their bodies just below the surface: it would be so easy to scoop them up, expose to spring breeze, watch them die in the palm of my hand. How long until they die? How long will the blessing last?  
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