The NS Poem: At the aquarium
After the bright jellyfish, snow crabs,seadragons unlovably leafy,the great Pacific octopus unfurlsher many-pearled arms.My fingers tighten in the jacket pocketwhere we secretly hold hands,the toothless stuff of romancea week old.Toothless and boneless,the placard says,she can escape a boatthrough a quarter-sized hole.I imagine the black-eyed krakenslipping a netas the fishermen pull up the knotted mesh, empty –and with one long, amorphous arm,she takes a man with her.A single tentacle brushes his hairand grips his waistwith those lip-like o’s,leaving something like kiss marks.He arches in the air(my fingers tighten)and fights the whole way down.
Regan Green is a poet and lecturer at Johns Hopkins University and the assistant editor of the “Birmingham Poetry Review”
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This article appears in the 25 Mar 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Easter Special
