Laura Stott
Baby Octopus Crawling on Hand
The octopus moves from behind
its rock in the DC zoo like a ghost,
a slow motion illustration of how sound
moves in the inner ear.
The creature floats from one glass
wall to another, all eight arms
filling the space with octopus,
sucking us all in.
Once, we found one, a baby octopus,
that I held in the palm of my hand,
and watched and felt it press
as close as it could into my cold skin,
watched all eight arms change
to the pink color of my life line
and callus. There it is.
My life disguised as octopus.
This is how to disappear.
Everyone gathers round
for nature’s magic trick. Children press
closer, parents lean over, they’re at the fair
and I’m holding a fortune-telling scarab,
glowing with landscapes of their futures.
None of us know as much
as we think we know.
I gently touch an arm
and the octopus changes
to a dark ocean brown,
quick and sudden,
no longer a part of me,
back to being something I must hold,
but perhaps I shouldn’t.
Waiting for Mammoths
On prime time,
they interview the scientist
who unearthed the great beast,
who was up to her waist
in mammoth gore, up to her elbows
in frozen flesh. And you can see
the excitement as she describes bile stones
in liver and they show a picture
of what looks like two large beetles,
two large prehistoric brachiopods.
And for a second, the camera
is on the reporter who looks as though
she is about to throw up.
But now, the scientist is telling us
about the blood that oozed out,
dark liquid, the thrill, the possibility
of complete DNA preserved
so perfectly in this mother,
Buttercup, they named the she-beast.
Didn’t they promise
they would give us a mammoth?
I’ve been watching the headlines,
hillsides, roadside farms,
for a glimpse. There is the question,
she says, if we should?
But you can tell she wants to.
How I long to see them
grazing on the islands,
their long wooly hair
blowing in the breeze,
their tusks making way,
filling the streets
with their saunter.
Deep in the bogs of time
if you passed them at sunset,
startled by their stillness,
you would take it as a sign.
In the mist, in Siberia,
I imagine saber-toothed tigers
and forests of giant ferns larger
than our houses, where we are nestled
and waiting for clones—
we’ll arise when we can’t sleep,
step into the night,
where we can almost see them
staring back, and hear their nervous
breath. And we’ll look up at the stars
that may already be burned out.