ALL RESPONSES |
| --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Though she has been dead
for near ten years, my mother—
like a fisherman’s wife
who waits and waits—
still leans over my crib
and wants to hold me
she still wants and wants
to hold me
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
will she share
her night vision
(you tell me your dream
i'll tell you mine)
or will she be haunted
to the end of her days
by the awful eye
of the octopi |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
This really sucks, she thought.
I’m sashimi for a cephalopod.
She had heard his songs in her sleep,
rubbery modern jazz on underwater radio.
It was as Octavius had said before the masses-
“Cunnalingus, octopus est!”
But, in the end of her mind, she saw Doctor O
insist on continuing the medication.
“We need to stabilize your mood.”
And all she ever wanted was her own petting zoo. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
the kraken seizes every plane
the sucking of the sea within his veins
to ravage ships be not enough
but to steal the life of the fisherman’s wife
to lie with her and breed like grecian gods
to tear away in bold blood what cannot be had
beneath the waves--the slick to the warming breast
the moaning of mooring in the flesh |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The Third Arm
“Dream of the Fisherman's Wife”
Now she knows
The smooth rub of the hectocotylus
Wonderful soothing of the ligula,
The boneless embrace.
How gentle the touch,
Expert and slow the urging,
Peaceful and sweet the opening,
In the moment of release.
She did not ask
About the terrible beak,
The other arms that cling and break.
This was her dream, for this time only,
Under her control. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
When she was five her brother told her
that men in the slaughterhouse hold
tin cups beneath the slashed throats
of cows, drinking the hot blood.
When she was eight she rebelled
against the chicken her mother
served her (in place of
the beef she refused to eat)
saying, “They call pig pork and
cattle beef, do we have to call
chicken, chicken?”
She claimed she could kill a
fish herself but when her college
boyfriend took her camping at
Lake Powell and she was in position
to actually do it (a nice bass,
to his smaller perch) she wept,
and pleaded for the boy to let it
go. (He didn’t.)
She held onto to calamari until a
documentary on octopus and squid
demonstrated the creatures as
intelligent, kind and endearing.
Her mother-in-law taunts her, mixing
crumbled sausage into the macaroni and
cheese, tuna into the salad. She says
to her son, “How can you bear to be with
someone so narrow?”
The son pictures his wife: Naked. Willing.
Delicious. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
In the middle of winter
we dream of flesh, wait for the arrival
of the spawning season, like the skrei
(an old Norse word meaning "wanderer") we swim
towards a slender sea we do not know the name of.
One day we will come away & in our bones
know, we are ready
to make history.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
| On Tuesday the fisherman’s wife treated herself to a live octopus from the market place. She took it home for dinner. It lashed its tentacles across the countertop as her fingers eviscerated its saclike body. Then came a spritz of fresh lemon juice and a knife, hacking tentacles into wriggling bits that suckered to her lips as she stuffed them into her mouth. That night, after tea, she slept very well, dreaming that she had taken her basket of laundry to the ocean. The great octopus living there wrapped tentacles around her ankles and yanked her topknot loose. Her hair spread on the water, a shroud of black ink, as the octopus enveloped her in its eight legs and pressed her inner thighs to its mouth. As a cook aboard the fisherman’s ship, I walked the deck midday, decoding the mysterious breath of Pacific winds. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The etymology of octopus lies
in its set of giant grabs, the first
and third of which reach for slender
necks, the 7th and 5th caress
the ocean bottom’s silt or the silk
of hair or a dress, the 8th and 6th
read the ocean’s braille for words
representing the concepts 'vulnerable,'
'mountains and valleys' in waves,
the suction and strangleholds
of heavy creatures of the dark.
That leaves the second and fourth
tentacles to impress upon the things
they crawl across, their own slimy
nature. Doubled in its compound
name, octo and puss, miscontrued
as arm and feet, the arm more
terrible in image than the foot.
Would you eat this if it were
a dream? For real?
Everyday a fisherman brings home
an octopus caught in the net,
a chalky thing inching toward some
freedom far beyond its reach.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
What we hold onto in this life:
Creatures of sea-salt, muck, shade.
You know my many oceans, night
Undulating above, below
Fisherman and living wife of flesh
Like bottles, vessels of infinite
Space within which I might slip wet
Dreams of who we've been and will be. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
some men
are like octopus
they wrap
their tentacles
around you
pull you under
before you know
you’ve lost
your soul
and you’ve forgotten
who you were
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
Dear #14327,
You say the women you've loved
would crown you a cunnilingus champ --
soft with tongue, steady and rhythmic,
a real lady pleaser. See,
all you assholes seem to think
you're the superheroes of cunt control,
but let me ask you something --
if your mouth was indeed God's gift to pussy,
would you be paying me to lay here
and endure it? I'm not pulling your head closer
in ecstasy, baldy, I'm negotiating around
rugburn from your Brillo pad
of a moustache. And all these pillows,
see, they're for covering my rolling eyes
when you look up at me as if to ask
Are You There Yet?
And -- wait -- what are you doing now?
Why are you spitting on me?
Are you having a seizure?
What IS that, man?
Oh - You want to please me, you say?
You want to make me come? Gee,
I'm flattered. Please, do continue;
however, keep in mind
that if you bite down on my clitoris
one more time in the name of my orgasm
I will personally grab those droopy tentacles
you call testicles and shove them so far up your ass
you'll be coughing up pubes for weeks.
Yours in professionalism,
#83952 |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
When Yuki was pregnant with her fourth child she investigated options.
Infanticide, Abortion, Adoption or having the child and raising it(Shudder)
She understood infanticide was actually safer for the mother than an abortion (though she heard this was not the case in the west) and though she could imagine it (and did with all her newborns) she was certain she could never actually bring her knee to the small of a child’s chest and lean in, listening for the last gasp then burying the evidence.
Adoption was ruled out by the entire Shimimoto family. Everyone, even Yuki, despite the filth in the Oko-San clinic, wanted to terminate the pregnancy with an abortion. This was an unwanted child. She would and did visit Oko-San.
First there was a smell, then a stench, then a pain so severe she could not leave the bed, and then the flies came. Her daughter would help clear away the maggots and the mucus and she eventually (and surprisingly) healed.
To never again bear children came as a relief, but, when she was quiet, she remembered the maggots.(Shudder)
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
my ninety five year old grandmother once said and i quote:
"men and women are different (and here I must have rolled an eye, pulled a smirk. my face. my best friend. betrayed yet again for she said and i continue the quote) "it's true! they are different (and here a thought passed through my eyes to what would become my wife, a thought that said and i paraphrase here because it wasn't really any kind of communication that could be recorded with a " and a " but what it said was HOLY SHIT GRAMS HAS FINALLY LOST HER MIND but this was from me to her. From her to me read like this: HOLY SHIT YOUR GRAMS IS BATSHIT CRAZY) but again, my ninety five year old grandmother, who was not then and never was before or after crazy and remained lucid until the day she died caught this exchange, so I continue with the quote, she said "it is true! women have vaginas and men have penises." (and with that she was done. She had said it all. and i thought to myself on the ride back to chicago, i thought: in her ninety five years of living life on this earth, after losing one son to the knife of a fanatic and the other to bitter black anger and that's it?
But now that I am older and none wiser i have to agree. she was right. it is true.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
She sits on the black leather chair while I wait.Her partner - a curvaceous beauty,
many inches taller than she is
balances between her legs,
like an overweight lover ssking for rescue. One finger behind the neck, four fingers in front
sliding down the chords, making music out of nothing.
Two hands
skilled like nothing else.
Four chords, eager for touch.
Forget about the mystic creature of women's dreams.The fisherman knows nothing of us. I would lay down with the bass player any day instead.
(or the celloist, for that matter)
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
They said it would never last
That our love was wrong
but your tongue on my vulva is far more pleasing
than any shogun's charge.
So I ask you now,
great octopi of the sea
will you stand up for your rights?
Will you marry me, a geisha?
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
A nightmare is different
Than a wish
In that the fish
I drag drag drag to
shore
Is more like the sea
I leave behind.
O, the dark scale
of the horizon
it’s dorsal fin
mountains
and the entrail-
universe
I’ll never
reroute.
Dream, I
will
Never clean
you.
A wish, what is
It about?
Promise. And it’s
All for me.
The sky opens
Like a fish’s mouth
And the clouds
Become flaky flesh.
I pull
The sunfish up
Like orgasms
From the inside of me
which could be the sea
Itself.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I like it
when you don't
cause you come to me
when he can't give you
your little death
I can be your cover your
comfort your consolation
pull you from his dreams
spirit you to yours |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
The pout of my lips; curved, moist,
fuller than yours,
part first for the words
traveling the length of my fat tongue.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I wish I were an
octopus, that I
might hold you in
eight arms instead
of two; with eight
limbs instead of
four.
I wish I were an
octopus, boneless,
offering a softer
shoulder that you
might rest your
head upon, running
eight pointed
fingertips
through your hair.
I wish I were an
octopus, able to
squeeze into
the smallest parts
of you.
I wish I were an
octopus, disappearing
in a cloud of
ink after you have
rejected me,
jet propulsed
beyond the reach
of your sight or
even memory. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I dreamed of the fisherman's wife
and so I came on land to seek my love.
I found it dry and gravity harsh,
and people called me a monster.
I dreamed of her callused hands,
her face a shock of pleasure,
but she was like the rest. Scared.
The sea is my home, the slime and kelp beds
and so home I came
to my own wife - her tentacles
sagging with age, her eyes nested
in crow's feet, her wry, cutting humor.
She will forgive my in time -
She knows I am a fool of a mollusk -
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I punched my own guts out. Hands
run so deep, it's hard get calm.
Spread that ice plant to stabilize
the sandy soils, now it's splayed
like a grizzly octopus all around. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
You sleep soundly while
two lovers take you with their
arms, arms, arms, arms, arms. |
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
|
|
I saw an illustration that was both
disturbing and sexy
titled Dream of the Fisherman's Wife.
I was supposed to write about it
but made uneasy,
I put away my pen.
Today I found the image
and looked at it again.
Same feelings resurfaced
but something else happened.
I was able to see the beautiful pencil-lines
the elegant writing in the background,
the gentle way her body
lay in complete abandonment.
A monster of the sea is making love to her
and she does not seem to mind
eyes closed to it and her body's pleasure.
This was what disgusted me at first...
how could she?
But then I thought of me
laying in abandonment
while you made love to me.
You were never a monster,
that I could not see in you,
but it was what we were hiding inside
the monster to which we would eventually succumb.
|
|
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
