stonepicnicking_okapi

lunabee34 is looking Franny Choi's Soft Science for this month's Poetry Jam. Here are two I liked. The first reminded me of tentacle fic, the second of Andy from The Old Guard. There was a third "Solitude" which I also liked; it had some choice phrases which sounded nice to my ears, although overall a bit too modern *adjusts pince-nez accordingly*

Shokushu Goukan for the Cyborg Soul by Franny Choi

When it’s demon cephalopod versus schoolgirl, it should be obvious
whose eyes to take. Nothing is more frightening than looking

and loving what you see. Nothing is sexier than a rumor
of shredding you can pornhub with saliva and thirsty nerves.

I’m a net teeming with pervy fingers, reaching for anything
that will bite me back, any promise of stoppage—

A cyborg woman touches herself for three reasons:

1. to inspect the machinery for errors;
2. to convince herself she is a mammal;
3. to pull herself apart.

Each tentacle of an octopus contains brain matter and a personality.
Fun fact: all my children-arms want to fuck each other. Okay,

so I am both the woman holding the camera and the woman
being opened by it—nothing special about that.

I am only a cuttlefish lying open-jawed under the sand,
a squid flashing red as it pulls a fishgirl into its beak. I am

just trying to sleep. To feed. To fill
myself and grow larger from it.

Or: I am only trying to slither back into my first skin.

Or: I am only trying to remember how it felt not to leak.

& O Bright Star of Disaster, I Have Been Lit by Franny Choi

i have come & come here a thousand times,
gone by many names. trust: i am no god,

only woodworm, only termite burrowing
like a light in the flesh. i am no insect,

only an ache on loop in the window.
be honest. the wounds have been bearable

thus far. & who isn't bruised around the edges,
peaches poured into the truck bed, receipts

faded to white? i have only ever wanted to bite
down hard on whatever was offered

to my hothouse mouth. & here i am, licking corners
like a nervous cat, squirming in the hallway

outside the bathroom. i pick up the accent
of whoever i'm speaking to. nobody wants

to fuck a sponge. nobody wants to crush
on a ghost. o sure, we all do it anyway:

flickering screen; falsies batting; a story
of a story of a girl, or a country, or a clean house

where everyone knows her place. my face
is a game of telephone gone sour, or south.

fleshy marionette in the window, dancing
her awful, crooked dance. & isn't that

what you paid for? isn't that what you came
to see? a god, on loop, failing?