Kevin Walter
Mermaid
You show reluctance behind the fire hydrant spray. Haze hangs higher than sun over water. You
were there, impeccable. Hygiene washes up on shore. To make a myth out of what happened. A
table tipped over separates the houses. As oak divides amongst branches. Supper in silence on
patio. What beautiful gladiolas. Sprouting on driveway. Carnations in crab shells. When my brain
gets in the way it’s a complete mess. The Greeks had the ones with mermaids. Worry less about
cement, more about the hearth. Prehistoric campsites. Echinacea at night. If I had a brain, it
would be clucking roosters.
Report
Hornets becoming pelicans
(not a world I want
to live in, what without
the hurried convents
becoming shoes), horses
becoming glue. In search
of agencies (we look for
binders, landfills
of binders), we fine-tune
birdsong to the pluck
of taut clotheslines
(the musical bars
with their musical chairs
absorb the multiple
choices) of sunrise.
It’s raining December
(hallelujah), it’s balmy,
& Jesus Christ am I itchy.
& on the third day, he
partied again. It’s easy
for a new-age bible
salesman to find
love over a chasm
(on a rickety drawbridge,
we shoulder a ladder
above the void you see
with stage lights in your eyes,
when you realize
it’s so dark
that no one will answer you)—
it’s bigger than your life.
Fear & attraction activate
the same mechanical
horseflies in our brains,
& I don’t remember
whatever I’ve said, & half
of the actual events
on the actual days we followed
the fingerless sky
into our sanctimonious
mornings (our sincerities,
our niceties, our complex
picnics in the basement).
I blank on your middle name & lose
my own. I’ve had a bad memory
since I can remember. We should
always describe our cars
solely in the light
they accept from
the invention
of daytime (in banal sitcoms
of the future, straw man families
will be replaced by loners
with low salaries & self-
actualization issues), & we should
build greenhouses on top
of other greenhouses (solar
powered solar energy will spray
from the fully-charged protons
in the tablet cradled in the cobweb
in the corner) before the world ends.
We’ll wish we’d run
fewer marathons & the ship
into the ground. God
never asked Noah to build a boat—
it could’ve been a log cabin,
a tent made of reeds, a frame
of steel on the perimeter
of a matted photograph.
Coast within the picture
until the show’s over,
before animal morphology
is all the rage & rage
is all but over (invent
a perfect future
narrative in the frontal lobe
of your present) again,
& take two of every
memory so no one
gets lonely.
My favorite souvenir is a tiny, withered plum blossom branch from the Czech Republic. In spring of 2010, I went to visit my best friend Jason in Brno, and there was a tree that grew very close to his bedroom window. So close that we could reach out and pluck fruit from the branches, or shake the fruit to he grass below, while leaning on the ledge and smoking. On the night before I left, a small group of us went to a small park across the street and he read a poem that he had written--there was a gorgeous line about that tree. I knew I couldn't steal the line (as much as I wanted to), so I took a branch instead.
Kevin Walter lives in Brooklyn, NY and is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School. He has a day job that has nothing to do with poetry. He was voted best male singer of his senior class in high school, tallying three votes. He grew up across the street from the ocean, but hates shrimp and can't swim. His writing has previously appeared in Forklift, Ohio, Sixth Finch, Everyday Genius, dislocate, Unshod Quills, and The Equalizer.