Skylaar Amann

Mermaid’s Lament

Your nametag says Prince, but I’ve never met one.
You keep me sleeping outside your door: tell me, am I another fish
off the side of the ship?

**********************Hook, line, and sinker, my mother said, the old cynic.
No one told me it would be so hot up here. The earth beneath
me swells and falls. I swoon. A metal railing
catches me—where are you?

***************************That night, under stars and paper lanterns,
when you gazed off the prow in my direction, did you see me,
or your impeccable reflection? Look what I gave up for you—you
wouldn’t know sacrifice if it washed up rotting at your feet. Try standing downwind
sometime, then you’ll know how I feel.

***********************************Take me away to the blue room,
where silence packs our ears and your hushed tongue sounds echoes
through the chamber. Remind me why I came above. For your eyes
like sanded glass? lips that grin like low tide over a shallow reef?

**********************************************************Full moon
a week ago, but I can still feel the tug in my new skin, in my teeth, in my phantom tail.

Prince

My hands are tied, Angelfish. My jurisdiction ends
at the edge of the tide, and you’re still half below
the waves.

*********I’ve never met anyone like you either.
You compare saucers to seashells, delight in clouds
and worms, but your tongue stings like those jellyfish
that used to light your nights like lanterns.

***************************************I can see
your heart as well as the bottom of the ocean. You want
my respect, you’ve got it, more than most. But this arm’s
length you say I keep you at—that’s you keeping me.
This tide pool at our feet, ignore the urchins and look in:
glades of kelp caught in the mirrors of your eyes, not me.
End of the day, I’m still a prince, obligation demands: parties
at the castle, new clothes, the whole bit.

***********************************What else can I offer you?
I know the surf whispers to you in sleep, the lowing
of the whales your lullaby. I am all skin and lungs and opposable thumbs.
Take a look: so are you now. You’ve made this bed, down and silk,
not reeds or coral or sand.

***********************Your feet ache like the graze
of shark teeth? Lie down, I’ll call the masseuse,
the speech therapist, anything you want, but promise me: just once
keep the windows closed, and the curtains.

***************************************The cold air keeps me awake,
makes me late for work; the cold air makes you dream only of the sea.

RE:      Wake

Other,

I could stand on the bluff all day and wait. Wind blows fog; salt crusts my shoes. Then—horizon line: your warm breath on the cold sea—smoke signal, mirrored s.o.s. refracts. I run, but eroding sandstone holds me. The edge, one foot on the hundred-foot cliff, another balances above the waves—black shadows surface. You are faster than I remember following. I hitch a ride in a wooden aeroplane I can’t see keep speed. Elastic space between us. Multiply—I’ll follow you.

Black fins, flukes cut the water. Nose up and spyhop—spot me spotting you? Jump higher, breathe dry air with your wet head, lungs like canvas sails. Don’t breathe and dive deeper. Too high I can’t—you breathe for me. Too shallow, you down there, join me. Spine bends arc above the waves. Breach: bellyskin to whitecaps, reach me. Black-and-white blocks the sun, one ton and ten massless rides the wind beside myself. Eye sidelong: blue-grey like sea enough to hold me. Brown like tiny mine, petrified wood. A woman I don’t recognize from another era looks back in a blink, in a hundred years, the fin de siècle in her floppy hat. Flap a fin like her shrug. Blades of the helicopter cut above. Beneath again, breathe deep, leave a footprint on the water, gumshoe, clues to follow you: I know. Barnacle-crust mouth says eye knows too.

Out-of-body, look down at you. Spirit guide like I died? Hide me in your eye: eons of tide line, salt brine. Eyelid-cradle human-sized. Trite? Too trying to say divine? Glass float sea globe eye, big enough to house me, haunt me. Microcosmic algae, shellfish living on your beak beckon me, a beacon. Silent giant, sing me your sonar song. Echo me in the cave of your throat. Locate me among you. I float my dory through your lumbering flotilla, another trace of plankton flotsam, a flurry amid skeins of baleen.

~~~~~~~~

Skylaar Amann is a poet and artist living in Portland, Oregon. She has hand-bound several hardback and chapbook editions of her writing and drawing. In 2005, Skylaar received a Kidd Tutorial fellowship and scholarship from the University of Oregon. She writes regularly on the subjects of the sea, love, and chronic pain.