Benjamin Harnett
The Octopus
Out into the wary wideness
eight minds dragged it, sunlight
fire here, the cool of dark
downwardness. Tentacles go
self, self, self, self, stone!
Ah, lifted to the eyes, this the one.
Quick, back to the closeness
of home.
Felt air, once, a pitiless
flattening, the bright roar, God.
It worries an old scar
balancing self-wrapped rock
on others like a bone. What
was the self, but worry
without comfort, and ache
for food.
To be a child again, all eye
and jelly, drift among ignorant
millions, and be swept up into
a world-mouth with one’s family,
to dissolve instead of being
torn by iron to die alone.
Yes, the new cave needs
another stone.
eight minds dragged it, sunlight
fire here, the cool of dark
downwardness. Tentacles go
self, self, self, self, stone!
Ah, lifted to the eyes, this the one.
Quick, back to the closeness
of home.
Felt air, once, a pitiless
flattening, the bright roar, God.
It worries an old scar
balancing self-wrapped rock
on others like a bone. What
was the self, but worry
without comfort, and ache
for food.
To be a child again, all eye
and jelly, drift among ignorant
millions, and be swept up into
a world-mouth with one’s family,
to dissolve instead of being
torn by iron to die alone.
Yes, the new cave needs
another stone.
Benjamin Harnett, born 1981 in Cooperstown, NY, is a fiction writer, poet, historian, and digital engineer. His essays, poems, translations, and short stories have appeared in Brooklyn Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, Wag’s Revue, the Columbia Review, Tahoma Literary Review, and Queen Mob’s Tea House. He holds an MA in Classics from Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Toni, and their pets. In 2005, he co-founded the fashion brand Hayden-Harnett. He currently works at The New York Times.