Skip to content →

Shokushu Goukan for the Cyborg Soul

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.

from Soft ScienceFind more by Franny Choi at the library

Copyright © 2019 Franny Choi
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.

Published in Franny Choi Poems

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, a State-based program of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this (publication, website, exhibit, etc.) do not necessarily represent those of the Idaho Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.