For the Silver Octopus
Katie Bierach
I am confronting you with questions, silver octopus,
lounging underneath your twisting tentacles,
despite my near-bare chest tense with winter cold
on this still afternoon, the storm’s next day.
When children dive through your swirling arms
do you damn the alchemist who transformed
your dear black ink into leaking, melted frost?
Could you see your sculptor carving your bulging eyes?
And do you tire of your posture, your head thrown back,
fierce and forgiving, forever frozen away from the sea,
your two arms trailing, straightened across cement
like the sunshine-curious roots of sidewalk-cracking trees?
What modern Medusa hardened you in this hectic park?
Who caged us inside its sharp wrought iron fence
among white Frisbees like flying clamshells
and the grungy grunting of malodorous loping dogs?
Leaves fill your funnel and the Os of your eight arms.
As a new stone statue, I worry over wind and dust
and the sandy children seated on my paint-thick mermaid tail,
rubbing warm, jellied fingers on my necklace of stone pearls.
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