̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ ̶ (disambiguation)
by stevie redwood
CW: Body Horror
1. [octopus] arms are joined at their bases by a web of tissue known as the skirt, at the centre of which lies
the mouth.
(Encyclopædia Britannica / entry: octopus)
2. [t]he [mollusk] radula is a spiked, muscular tongue-like organ with multiple rows of tiny teeth.
(Wikipedia / entry: octopus)
3. I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman Cephalopod
(Britney Spears / entry: Britney [disambiguation])
i was born a meaty tangle of arms
just like any other creature of the chasm
any many-suckered salt-covered beast
like every unfathomable animal,
faithful predators we be.
recipe for a girlhood:
step 1.
start with all the little deaths.
shake them out into an empty globe sliced off
at the equator. let them trample each other
for the peak of the trap heap like crawfish
snapping in their harvest pail.
them desperate. them brutes.
them boneless. them grasping
like they aren’t already dead.
we the predators. we the prey.
we the spineless. yes—no
backs to break. be broken.
we the shapeshifters.
we the soft-bodied, ready
to shrink.
step 2.
winnow the water. measure the salt.
we the cyanide-blooded.
we the reaped.
mercy. mercy.
i want out of this harvest. you too. take your armor off
my mouth. take my arm. we can ladder out of here
arm over tailfin. claw over arm. i’ll be the sucker
this time. just promise you won’t leave me
stuck. tuck in your scythes. arm my mouth. i want out—
we the abyssal
the hadal
the Hadean.
step 3.
trap the reapers.
crack the bones
of the deathly
into threes.
sinews shirr my limbs into a skirt.
at the center of my skirt is a mouth.
in the gully of my mouth
is a sawtooth tongue.
them the triplet
-hearted. we
the ever dead—
step 4.
grind the bones
against my tongue-teeth
one by one
by one
stevie redwood is a chinese-jewish neuroemergent introvert genderpervert homotrash littledreamer bigmouth freak living & dying on Ohlone land (San Francisco, CA). they like shittalk, porchsitting, leaflitter, & riffraff. find them trolling yimbys on twitter @trash_whisperer