The Day the Final Mermaid Died
—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
& I could almost feel my apartment breaking like a plate shifting out to sea
& I guess, I missed her
& 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
○
& 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
○
& that day on the beach my clothes kept cracking for her
& blisters nearly like gnarled coral calcified my knuckles
& all the two of us could do was wait for the frustrating tide
& 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
miss you all along.