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.

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