Octopus Oktapodi Tintenfisch Krake

give me octopus anyday. aegean octopus. caught by baba yianni, lingering briefly in a plastic shopping bag with seawater, eventually tenderized with forty beatings on a nearby rock formation, rubbed, frothed and beaten again. grilled, boiled, stifado (stewed with onion). we children would sit on the beach, sand literally "everywhere," meaning in our ears, noseholes, on eyelashes, skin, bumcrevice, you name it... stickysaltysweaty sand. we played with the lingering octopi in the plastic seawater bags, watched them cling to us with hundreds of tentacle-hickies on our arms. i wonder now if they tasted the salt and sand on us, desperately attaching to what they believed was a step back into home... we screeched and giggled at their stickiness, watching baba prepare their finicky flesh for our meal out next to the water. i remember that was the summer i was wearing my all-time favorite (yes, to this day...) swimsuit, a bright blue onesie adidas, white strips up the sides, burned shoulders and slowly sunbleaching long hair, skinny little swissgreekamerican girl. i wasn't even interested in food at the time, but octopus and fresh figs somehow rest happy in my mind. climbing fig trees on thassos... but i digress, we'll leave the figs for another time,... and the fish that the sea caught for me in my lost and tossed fishing line wound around a little cork board...

ode to an octopus

sticky salty

long and clingy

regal in the sea

loving living under

between behind the rocks

frothy kissy hicky clingy

tender meaty lemon

olive vinegar oniony

m m m!