poetry by jillian a. fantin

The Squid

or Loligo vulgaris,  as stated by my eighth grade biology teacher,   who forced me to dissect one in class, to dry heave   for the first time because I thought of squid babies   left dying while private schoolers poked their dad,  his guts with pins, pen knives and pointer fingers  for the purposes of 

____Identify the beak (see figure 1)  ____Find the ink sack (see figure 2a)

as if we didn’t take our tests in pen.

At 3 PM, we placed our scalpels   sharp-side-up   inside the sink,   splashed our Squid in the bin outside the lab—I hate   the smell of fish. I have another class after this,   so don’t leave any tentacles or you’ll find them   on your desks tomorrow. We knew she was kidding, but

the Squid is   everything here in crumpled up straw wrappers
  in snaking condensation    in those ribbon bookmarks that spill out of journals

in

tonight,

tonight, as I touched my first penis.   It was soft, like a just-boiled potato,   peeled then packed into pantyhose.   When my fingers ventured further,   palm arching into a benevolent parabola,   the Squid surfaced. His ink sack   jolted hot dribbles against my knuckles, 

sludged in curves about my hand,  dried into suckers. I straightened.  Snapped from the gym shorts. Scraped  the cinema seat. Struggled to remember

vulgaris means common, not gross, in Latin,  vulgaris means common, not gross.  In eighth grade I thought it meant gross.  Common, not gross.

Jillian A. Fantin (@jilly_stardust on Twitter) is a poet, the recipient of a 2021 Poet Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and a regular collaborator with Chicago-based mixed media artist Kate Luther. Jillian’s work is published in or forthcoming from The American Journal of Poetry, TIMBER, Barrelhouse, The Daily Drunk, Harpur Palate, Selcouth Station, Homology Lit, and elsewhere.