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Poet's Choice

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I am trying to make my pain attractive, my yearning

pretty. A man caught me in a fine-ply lobster pot.

He scalded me until I nearly died, then threw me back.

I gape like this because of the ordeal. Did you foresee

this moment, where what you intended to devour

devours you? Did you know they'd haul us up

into the suffocating air, our bodies fused together?

This creature is used not only for the attractive purple dye but as bait to attract another creature, so that attraction itself becomes a matter for uncertainty, mystery, doubt. On the one hand I am "trying to make my pain attractive" -- as people have been known to do, in love and art, sometimes with beautiful results -- but on the other hand, the process is full of pain, cruelty, deceptions and reversals.

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