Asian Trampsnail, a Twenty-first-century Love Sonnet

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Bradybaena similaris – Wikipedia

Some spiral creatures go against the grain

Of spiral patterns.  Normal snails in seas

Make curling shells, right-curling in the main.

These snails are gender bending.  They can seize

Another snail for sex and they can screw

Each other twisting one way then the next

Because they’re both hermaphrodites.  The spew

Of semen finds its place when pumping sexed

Inside the other’s proper hole.  The curl

Of penis in one type of snail is shaped

In corkscrew spiral.  It must stretch, unfurl

Inside the female, nearly corkscrew raped.

  Snails, slimy sexters, have to fit just right

    To make their babies, pole and hole slick, tight.