O, to be a Cnidarian!

How do you solve that old classic, the  
mind-body problem  
if you have many bodies and yet not a single mind amongst them?  
I know I would at least be  
beautiful if I was a siphonophore, coiling  
my bodies into an abyssal spiral, multiplying 
my zooids into specialized abundance, catching  
marine snow, plankton, and erstwhile fish.  

How humiliating,  
doing all that extra work– growing a spine, a brain, some bones, jaws, blood, fins, scales, 
eyes, muscles, gills, excretory systems 
just to get tangled up with  
my many basic bodies swarming with  
their delicate tentacles brimming with  
their hair-trigger nematocysts with  
barbs popping cell walls like lethal caviar, fizzing champagne pain.  

And of course the true beauty is  
I would be none the wiser, having no mind but many bodies  
much as I would relish taunting the fish my bodies embrace and consume. 

I’ve Been Thinking About You 

          
See me after class, you’ll find me  
under a delicious decaying log  
in the tunnel maze tents of the webspinners,  
jumping backwards to escape my glare.  

We’ll talk, when the moth hatches  
from her first-class cocoon, at high noon, 
after she ruined a perfectly good kilowatt-hour  
power blazer (reliquary quality if not for the moth holes). 

You’ll find me 
under the scales of her wings, wrapped in lightwaves  
in the manner of throwblankets or sumptuous 
silk evening gowns.  

Let’s grab a coffee, catch up  
underneath the beadwork done in India, sold in Italy,  
where the dust mites have yet to colonize  
but their realtors are carving up the dust mite realestate 
on the back of a dust mite napkin as we speak.  
You’ll find me trapped  
in a Swarovski crystal, (aurora borealis of course,  
I’m not destitute) between threads, yarns, and bugle beads begging to get snagged.  

Meet me in amber, from a warzone, where I’m fossilized mid-meal. I’ll be 
waiting for you, eternally young, frozen in golden gourmet ecstasy until the end of time 
or until a jeweler grinds me away or the Tsarists polish me up  
and encrust me in a wall in a palace where I’ll shine for years  
and years until my sisters and I are pillaged by Nazis  
and then you’ll never see me again.  

So. See me after class,  
you will find me  
in the hallway  
hanging, from a cobweb.  

ASHER EATON

Asher Eaton is a fashion designer and Pratt Institute alum. He lives in Brooklyn and works at a resort wear line in Manhattan. Across fashion, poetry, and illustration/animation, he focuses on the dichotomy of compulsion and revulsion. You can find his work at www.ashereaton.com and @ashereatondotcom.