After the bright jellyfish, snow crabs,
seadragons unlovably leafy,
the great Pacific octopus unfurls
her many-pearled arms.
My fingers tighten in the jacket pocket
where we secretly hold hands,
the toothless stuff of romance
a week old.
Toothless and boneless,
the placard says,
she can escape a boat
through a quarter-sized hole.
I imagine the black-eyed kraken
slipping a net
as the fishermen pull up the knotted mesh, empty –
and with one long, amorphous arm,
she takes a man with her.
A single tentacle brushes his hair
and grips his waist
with those lip-like o’s,
leaving something like kiss marks.
He arches in the air
(my fingers tighten)
and fights the whole way down.
Regan Green is a poet and lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and the assistant editor of the “Birmingham Poetry Review”
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 25 Mar 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Easter Special