Barnum's Feejee Mermaid Poem by Melissa Morphew

Barnum's Feejee Mermaid



She swims in the dust light
of an afternoon window—
this taxidermy marvel
of female orangutan and fin,
her face creased in perpetual scream.
The curious have dwindled
to one young man from Nebraska,
who ducked inside to escape the cold.
So she croons to him—the lament
of honeybees in clover,
dragonflies whose wings touch
and untouch the algae-green
ponds of summer—and he is mesmerized
by grief. Her black peony mouth
open and open
as if she would consummate the loneliness
of astrolabes, swallow the cosmos.
He slips behind the velvet rope,
so close, his breath
kisses her mummified scales.
“Hideous, ” the Tribune had said. “A hoax.”
But already the young man loves her,
sinking into the depth of oceans,
the coral labyrinth,
the sailors’ lust,
the song.

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