Woman with the Beak of an Octopus<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
She has become almost human, having been a creature
\nof the sea, multi-armed, dependent on saltwater,
\nand on certain tidal patterns and marine behavior.<\/p>\n
Though she has become almost human, her skeleton is new,
\ninflexible and strange to her. What she still doesn\u2019t know
\nabout air she is trying hard to learn, with neurons<\/p>\n
numbering in the billions now, gills gone, her new brain
\nlocalized and voluminous. For years, her arms had been
\nconscious entities, self-directed. That was before the bones<\/p>\n
began to grow and the outer mantle to thin, before
\nthe siphon closed. By choice, she left the shallow floor
\nof the ocean and began to move closer in to shore,<\/p>\n
pulled by a changeable sky and the marvel of human sound.
\nThe idea of seasons charmed her, as did the sun and moon,
\nand her desire for non-attachment trumped the art of suction.<\/p>\n
All that is left is to form a human mouth from her beak.
\nSoon now, she will forget the ink sac, forget how to breathe
\nunderwater, how to forage below the surface, how not to speak.<\/p>\n
In form, she will be human, though whenever she passes
\na large window, believing it to be liquid, her heart will race
\nand her hands will be drawn, inexplicably, toward the glass.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Woman with the Beak of an Octopus” originally appeared in The Indiana Review<\/a><\/em>\u00a0in a slightly different form. You might enjoy comparing the effect of the prose-poem structure to the lineated version, above.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Julie Larios<\/a> has published poems in many reviews including Field, Threepenny Review, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest,<\/em> and The Atlantic.<\/a><\/em> She also publishes books for children <\/a>(two of them illustrated by Seattle artist Julie Paschkis<\/a>) and recently wrote the libretto for a penny opera titled \u201cThree Acts of a Sad Play Performed Entirely in Bed\u201d <\/a>with music by composer Dag Gabrielson as part of the New York City Opera’s VOX Festival. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award and has been published twice in The Best American Poetry.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Woman with the Beak of an Octopus She has become almost human, having been a creature of the sea, multi-armed, dependent on saltwater, and on certain tidal patterns and marine behavior. Though she has become almost human, her skeleton … Continue reading