Erika Meitner
we went to the aquarium
each year and pressed
our palms to the tank-fronts.
the halls were enveloped
in dusk, and everything else
was lit from within.
bioluminescence
is not irrelevant
to the fact that on television
all we need to leave behind
is the smallest smudge
to be identified positively
in a database. sunrise
over the bridge and a siren—
always a siren in the distance.
for some crimes
we can ask forgiveness,
but for others, there are
no words. a child
picks out a nose, a hat,
a silhouette on screen
to make a face.
when sailors reported
seeing mermaids
they were probably
seeing manatees
or dugongs instead.
mermaid, siren, sea nymph—
are you tied to the mast
of a ship speeding past
an entire city calling neon,
or are you gentle—glacial, even?
some nights we sleep
under orange skies
with go-bags, with heaps
of supplies and pray
morning is less scary
than we think it might be.
some nights we wonder
where the startled creatures
go in large storms
when the aquarium tanks
fill with brackish water quickly
and the fish have gone missing
and the proud roller coasters
are swept under—
when whole neighborhoods
smolder from embers
carried on the wind
that fix under shingles.
you are/i am anything
but a dugong, a manatee
something from the order
of sirenians, a sirenia,
a genus, a species, a classification;
this group moves slow,
can be harmed. i know it now—
we all can be harmed.
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Erika Meitner is the author of three books of poems: most recently, Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (Anhinga Press, 2011) and Ideal Cities (HarperCollins, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner. Her poems have been published in The New Republic, VQR, Tin House, The Best American Poetry 2011, and elsewhere. A fourth collection of poems, Copia, is due from BOA Editions in 2014. Meitner is currently an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program. |