Roy Jacobstein

                                                 "Deep Sea Mystery Solved"

They say, mi amigo, genus Architeuthis, 
giant male squid, you "measure 45 feet long 
and would make calamari rings bigger 
than a tractor tire."
                                 (Sautéed in olive oil, 
spread over a steaming bed of rice,
you'd sate a hungry battalion—lie low, 
mon ami, down there in your inky cavern, 
half a mile below the sizzling woks.)

They say you "use an extremely muscular 
penis, three feet long and functioning 
like a rivet or nail gun," that your "encounters 
are infrequent and chance." 

When passing a female "like two ships 
in the night" 
                    (apologies, my friend, 
for the unbounded human appetite 
for seafood and cliché),
                                      they say you "quickly 
maneuver to hammer into one of her arms 
and inject under hydraulic pressure,
your six-inch line of sperm 
undulating in the pitch."

At last they've captured the bare details, 
but what do the scientists know of squid-time, 
of how fast your waiting for her passes 
in the safe cold depths, 
and how love's tentacles hold. 


Copyright © Roy Jacobstein All rights reserved

Witness, 1999, Love in America issue