At the awful seaside aquarium, I think about polyvagal theory
“Immobilisation is the critical point
of the experience of life-threat trauma events.” — Dr. Stephen Porges
The giant octopus studies me with anemone eye,
where dorsal branch of vagus nerve
freezes or faints, sea stench,
squeezed into an open-air trough.
No fight, trapped beast
of heart or mollusc, muscles stilled,
uncalm as reef-rock. Both of us
coral exoskeletons, rooted sea-mounts,
once single-minded swimmers
hooked in a room of caved tanks
where nothing disquiets, not even
larynxes of pipefish, a thousand floaters.
If I can take one breath, I’ll carry
nine brainstems to where its sea-cold
and innervated. I’ll carry the bulbous body
in my scarred body
to the intertidal, contortionism a camouflage
into each other,
appendages tangled, sinking,
photospheres lit like bright plankton.
This poem first appeared in Stirring Literary 24:4.
—
Lisa Marie Oliver is a Filipino-American poet and author of “Birthroot” (Glass Lyre Press). Her poems are found in Harbor Review, Tupelo Quarterly, River Heron Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her son and a kitchen spider named Carnelian. For more: lisamarieoliver.com
