Crank (Crank 1)

of her last days. She would pass

away in January, cold and gray

as a San Francisco winter.

When I returned to the macramé,

my fingers struggled over the

knots. I scrapped that project,

but did finish John Lennon.

As for the song, I had lost

the melody and my will to

find it. And the lyrics brought

me back to the fold of the monster.

Crank, You See

isn’t any ordinary

monster. It’s like a

giant octopus,

weaving

its tentacles not

just around you,

but through you,

squeezing

not hard enough to

kill you, but enough

to keep you from

reeling

until you try to get

away. Try, and you

hunger for its

grasping

clutch, the way its

tendrils prop you