The Day the Final Mermaid Died

Brennan Bogert

                                   —after Kai Cheng Thom

I was plumbing at home               listening to the news

& the gross heaving grease smell                of what my sink had to say

& that day it felt like everything was curdling

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& I could almost feel my apartment breaking             like a plate shifting                out to sea

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& I guess, I missed her

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& I wanted to see her silver skin

& scales, the harpoon scars defiant on her side              one more time

&  all  along  the  gross  coastline  birds       were  limping  like little fists                 punching the dirt

              digging for carrion covered by breeze covered               by maggots covered                   by my

              own           not looking

& I knew I was getting close though                   because I heard her                          not song               I

              heard the gas leaking from her gills

& I saw her lovely tons of flesh             splayed on the shore              her breasts gigantic

              transparent     brine-bubbled skin           her whale-eyes gooey                 blinking

& beautiful in the unfiltered light of the beach

& she looked at me                              at a pail that sat in the sand

& I began to scuttle across the beach            to splash water on her gills

& I gathered gallon, gathered            gallon, gathered whole spilled                swimming pools

& what splashed           on my dress         burnt off                    left a crab crust of salt-shell

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& I had loved her growing up             had her image                    maybe more doll-like           on every

              surface of my room

& I would finger the walls looking for water             looking for the coral would                      run my

              fingers across my own legs           hoping for a splinter of scales

& across my lap           looking for some flat slickness             I do not have &

I loved her for looking like that &                        eating sailors &                sinking their ships into the

              fat soup           of her hunger

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& that day on the beach               my clothes kept cracking             for her

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& blisters             nearly like gnarled coral calcified              my knuckles

& all the two of us could do was wait                for the frustrating tide

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& hours after             high tide hadn’t helped             her body just wedged there          like a mottled

              log

& there was nothing I wanted to do except spit               on it         for having asked               for having

              that awful fish-feathered body            like the kind I have

& I        I wanted so badly to lick            the salt-breath from those lips          for myself              I

              wanted to         kiss           until the pink skin of her            gums receded             leaving pearls

              inlaid with bones

& one huge corpse to dismantle by saw

& haul away           I wanted to display my own ship-sinking anger               which I had learned

              from watching her           battling bait from the boats

& taking hook in fin

& then                       as if she sensed what I was thinking                               she slammed her fish-limbs

              on the land

& said in a voice           so tired &            oiled &         clogged

Thank you I will

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miss you             all along.

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