The Mermaid Poem by Armadillo Poet

The Mermaid



To look at her in the waves
which jump as dolphins
onto the ridges of her back,

I think altogether
it was too sadly
that her families'

homes along the reefs
were burned out with oil
and speared with hooks.

I can remember
seeing her young and
flippantly trading me
guppies freshly wrought
from school for apples,

the seeds of which
I had carelessly become
accustomed to tossing
(although un-knowingly)
upon her head.

Now, finally grown,
her ribs, curving the
ways of a woman,

have no need
to be nourished
by the fruits
of trade.

Instead her crusted frame
is a home to the crabs-
her flesh long ago
picked clean from the salt
(no doubt by the cousins
of those same she used to
feed me) .

But all of this remembering is pointless:
apple trees cannot grow in the sea,
and nothing grasps such words from me but a skull.

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oct 17 - dec 26
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