☀ Today's Poem: "Katsu Ika Odori-Don" Padraig Regan

I know what animates this bunch of tentacles:
it’s just the salt in the soy filling the blanks in the dead nerves.

I tell myself this, but as the GIF keeps looping
through the same few frames, the same pattern of flicks & wiggles,

it’s difficult to not imagine necromancy, or worse,
the dumb protest of a lump of brain-stem.

At any moment I could stop this wonky, eight-limbed Charleston,
not by eating it but by closing the tab. I tell myself this.

Is it empathy that’s stopping me, a sense of duty
to bear witness & attend to the whims of the dead,

no matter how random? Not quite. Maybe it’s envy
or aspiration that keeps me watching. But do I envy

the hand that pours the sauce & turns this stump of a squid
into its own erratic puppet, or aspire to be as pliable

as the clump of tissue that receives its grace?
If, as the physician says, the soul weighs twenty-one grams,

it seems important that we find a way
to figure out how much of this is sodium

& therefore how much of us is lost in a fit of crying,
or passed back & forth throughout a night of sex.

It will take perhaps a minute for the last shudders
to peter out & the tentacles to lie still again.

I want to know is it best to wait before you start
the process of dismantling the legs with your chopsticks

& testing each one for its flavour; or is the reciprocity
of your tongue’s movements part of the pleasure of the dish?

When the time comes, feel free to keep a limb of mine
& drench it with soy if you feel lonely.