My Octopus Lover Makes No Bones
Sometimes he just zips off
leaving me twiddling my thumbs
on the ocean floor and returns
with objects, artifacts
of the human that drifted
to silt. Often mossed-over
coke cans: with my thumb
I rub off the layer of grime
so he can see the metal gleam.
He’ll bring a can right up
to his eye before tossing it
over his mantel. He finds
stranger stuff, too: like an old-
style computer mouse which
I had to explain was in fact
not a mutant horseshoe crab
but a tool—he knows tools
and bent a tentacle over it,
sliding it on the ocean floor
as if moving a cursor, before
throwing it, too, over his mantel
into what had become by then
a large pile. And once, he
brought back a clattering
of bones. He lowered beside me
like a prize claw, opening his
tentacles to deposit them.
I laid the bones out roughly
in the shape of a human,
though lots were missing: half
the ribcage, a femur, hands.
The skull, the crowning piece,
I set on last. Then I lay
beside it in the same position—
Vitruvian—so he could see
how this jumble makes a man.
To this day, he still tentacle-
pokes my knees, elbows,
and especially the sides of
my head, as if testing for them.
I fear it bothers him, all
those hardnesses I seem
to harbor, all my human junk.
BENJAMIN S. GROSSBERG's books of poetry include My Husband Would (University of Tampa, 2020), winner of the 2021 Connecticut Book Award, and Sweet Core Orchard (University of Tampa, 2009), winner of a Lambda Literary Award. He also wrote the novel, The Spring before Obergefell (University of Nebraska Press, 2024), which was selected by Percival Everett for the 2023 AWP Award Series James Alan McPherson Prize. Ben is Director of Creative Writing at the University of Hartford.