Sandra Simonds
MERMAN BE THE LAST ONE SWIMMING
MERMAN BE THE LAST ONE
SWIMMING
Come after her,
lungful of pollenblood. Sky me a box of shadows, open ye box of
bones. Neptune ripe.
This isnÕt Buchen anymore than it is Wald or a an uneaten apple in
a cell of fury bees
any more than it is anorexia in the thighs, the brown shoelaces of
kids behind glass, the
work songs of pines. Numerals swarm her ankles, she coffins
one up. Number 8. Did she turn it into missyÕs
crown and put it on her head? And
watched trees turn
into hourglasses pouring time out in languages she couldnÕt
identify. You can,
sand. Why does he say Mermaid when we are so far from the ocean?
Ask him why heÕs
always smiling. Once, when I was a child, I learned to fold a
piece of paper into a
little boat. Why are you always smiling? You rip off the hull, mast,
bow and you get a
T-shirt. Try it. You can make up a funny story about the sea
captain having
drowned. Ask him why he needs 8 bags of salt for his men or why the
woman rests her camera
on the oven. He will have all of the answers for you and he
will speak in a voice
of bubbles from the bottom of the ocean.
The ga-ga baby
grew and I
could do
nothing.
Thought
shrunk the point
where physics
and the pupil
collapse
and
then cancel
each
other
out.
Tom fell away
like a satellite
from a shuttle.
That
babe
would
not.
In the uterus
compartment
she was a different
sort
of animal
with
her sperm for hair
shit
sweet hands
piss
sour eyes.
Each cell
squared away
each cell was an alternate
opinion—come in Houston—
about where the limbs
and organs
would go.