The qalupalik waits in the icy shallows, just the other side of a big boulder. She wears an amautik, the coat of mothers, and its big wolverine-trimmed hood hides her slimy green skin and kelp-like hair. She hums to herself as she waits. If she is patient, children will come to her. Arctic char fingerlings swim […]
It was during those months of strangling, watery heat when Lizzie Williams first told us about the head. She kept it in a burlap sack and would walk everywhere with it slung over her shoulder. When she grew tired, she let it bump along behind her in the rusty dirt. It don’t mind, she told […]
Henrietta was light-headed. The old man slouching across from her had a sardine sandwich, so the waiting room reeked. Henrietta’s octopus enjoyed the stink, but she herself was nauseous. That’s why she was there: the dizziness, the hot bile, the drool.She turned to the girl beside her, green fringe poking from her pilling hoodie. Whispered: […]
I have a collection of octopuses. There’s probably an octopus in every room of my house, a tentacle waving at me from every doorway. I haven’t always collected them—I didn’t know anything about the animal as a kid. I’m mildly concerned about what a large collection of anything suggests about the collector. But there was […]