Lisa Ortiz
The Mermaid Returns Your Letter
Stop with the notes and the bottles.
Your tears taste weak.
One night in the sea,
one big moon, one lost kayak,
and you emerge brined
in the imagination of a school girl.
You wrote of my sunset lips
my glacier hips. You know nothing
of sea beasts.In our language love
is the same word as hunger and foam:
a lightness, a constant, a loss we suffer
when we get what we want.
Here’s the thing: I eat men.
Beauty is as beauty does; I smile
rows and rows of teeth. I swim
with blind hunger; my belly
is shark-white.You write I have a beautiful tail.
I write: your legs would be better with salt.
You weep and I hear the crunch
of your bones, imagine the soft
fat of your middle. You’re no seafarer;
you’re a sailor, a surfer, a fool.
You know only the surface and shimmer.If you love me, jump.
Let go of the board and the sail.
Close your eyes. My touch glistens
in scales. This is the love I know–– one strike
and a dive. Hold out your arms in the dark:
you are phosphorescent in fins and delight.
Yes, I can catch you. Yes, I can love you.
Yes, I grant wishes.
Bio:
Poems by Lisa Ortiz have appeared in Zyzzyva, Comstock Review and Poesy among others. She is the winner of a 2007 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize.
