Poetry by Jessica Rizzolo
NUMBER REASSIGNED

Before you died, you asked to see an octopus.
Though the aquarium glass was gummed
from too many hands. 

Though the animal was only
a wet clot in the corner. 

The nurse moved your body
to its dying spot, upright on the pillow. 

When the undertaker arrived,
I didn’t change the sheets.

The outline was left
though weight itself was gone. 

Did you know that the severed arm
of an octopus will try to feed
a phantom mouth?

Callous anatomy:
multiple brains that can ripple
on their own.

I dial your number to tell you this,
wonder at the stranger who answers.

The way I say your name,
a searching curve. 

As if he took the call you just missed.
As if summer, thickened so with roses,
called you outside, just for a moment.  

Dr. Jessica Bell Rizzolo is a conservation scientist and poet based in Chicago, Illinois. Her academic writing has been featured in Global Ecology and Conservation, Nature Conservation, Society & Animals, Frontiers in Conservation Science, and elsewhere. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Humana Obscura, Salamander, Sublunary Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Literary Mama, and Memorious. She has participated in the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Winter Workshop, and the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop.

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