ODE TO THE IMMORTAL JELLYFISH
Ja'net Danielo | Poetry
It’s not the living
forever or the 90
tentacles that dangle
from its body—
a soft white bell
just .18 inches
across. It’s
the transparency,
bright red
stomach at its
core, how,
in times of
starvation, it
transforms
from medusa
back to polyp,
all upturned palm
& open mouth,
how it does not hide
its hungers
from the world.
Ja’net Danielo is the author of the chapbooks This Body I Have Tried to Write (MAYDAY, 2022) and The Song of Our Disappearing (Paper Nautilus, 2021). A recipient of a Courage to Write Grant from the de Groot Foundation, a Professional Artist Fellowship from the Arts Council for Long Beach, and the Telluride Institute’s Fischer Prize, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Diode, Raleigh Review, Frontier Poetry, and In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence Press), among other places. Originally from Queens, NY, Ja’net lives in Long Beach, CA. Find her at www.jdanielo.com.
red and gray jellyfish by Brooks Leibee