Mary Kathyrn Jablonski

Octopus Bride

She has the eight arms of a Hindu goddess 
dancing. 
              Views this love with eyes unblinking, 

worries    over her third heart, having 
                        already broken two irreparably. 

She maintains a stronghold while clinging fast
       to him with limbs to spare.
                                                  Lets her body

do the thinking, tastes him with a thousand
           mouths. He
                         swallows the songs 
           of her ink,

finds her in camouflage. 
                                       She becomes him.
Managing in a cold world, their dreams

flee through the smallest openings.        With beaks like birds 
they fly a liquid sky
                                away 

from one another. He escapes like 
                Houdini Upside Down. Grief, 
                                           the boneless bag that 
                                                                            pulls her. 

            

Artist/poet Mary Kathryn Jablonski is most recently author of "Sugar Maker Moon," from Dos Madres Press. Her poems and collaborative video/poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, exhibitions, screenings and film festivals, including Atticus Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry Film Live (UK), Poetry Ireland Review (IRE), Quarterly West, and Salmagundi, among others. She was recently awarded a NYSCA Individual Artist's Grant in Poetry to complete a video/poem "chapbook” and is Senior Editor in Visual Art at Tupelo Quarterly.