A Mermaid Documentary
The television was briefly a crystal ball:
All the summer bodies lay suctioned
to the sofa: barnacles upon a
sunken ship.
In the time of lies, we believed
in mermaids.
And remembered when we saw
them too; strange scaled pixels
flashing through the
static ocean.
But it was only a Wellsian hoax,
Leaving us to make our own mermaids
of the fish among the swallowed
perfume bottles and cuckoo clocks:
The hauntings of the sea and the
intonations of white noise on
harlequin waves.