I am // just trying to sleep. To feed. To fill / myself and grow larger from it.
July 24, 2019
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.
Franny Choi, “Shokushu Goukan for the Cyborg Soul” from Soft Science. Copyright © 2019 by Franny Choi. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books, www.alicejamesbooks.org.