how she would tell the kids when they pushed
too many things at her to hold does it look to you
like I have octopus arms? she wasn’t being insensitive
she had no way of knowing the Monday Snack Parent
would one day be an octopus or how each sucker tastes
everything it touches think of the moist rags and crusted trucks
(as it shudders now at every stubbed butt and crumpled tissue)
it finds having eight arms little help with juggling
priorities rarely knows where all its arms are at once
only the viscosity and grain of each’s local environs
clammy skin or tacky concrete and whether one or another
is strung taut but can’t piece these impressions
into any bigger picture its brain isn’t made to process
this kind of problem it finds the futon with its eyes
to settle in for another night props the laptop
to express the range of turmoils eddying inside it
watches one tentacle tip extend toward the keys
and tap clumsily and again OHH GOD OH GODD
