Pescados de Pesadillas
Nightmare fish
When Dali submerged the young octopus
he’d found on the Catalan seashore
in acid, it was not
to watch the violent
irradiation of its skin from pearlescence
to wounded rose nor the convulsive
arabesques of its arms in the corrosive bath,
nor even for the etching he made
from its corpse so that Medusa
might be mantled with spectral,
tentacular snakes,
but that
he might earn from his transgression a lifetime
of dreams in which many-armed remorse
would roost upon his shoulder, lay
a chilled, reproachful catenary against his cheek
and in the instant before his ears turned
to granite he could at last hear
the soft, slightly acrid voice
pressing him for an answer
to its dark, indelible question.
Originally published in New Orleans Review
