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Issue 42 • October 2021
The Sea
edited by Akua Lezli Hope

Table of Contents

Issue 42 poets read: facebook.com/specpo/videos/4554051081382302

Editor’s IntroductionAkua Lezli Hope

The Standard Model of Shoals • Bradley Earle Hoge
Bone Necklace • Juan Manuel Pérez
Sea Gods • Mary Soon Lee
The Sea Shares Her Origin Story • Melissa Ridley Elmes
The Cove • Gerri Leen
Below the Waves • Chad Hensley
Salmon Ladder • Gary Every
The Kings of New Atlantis • Herb Kauderer
Umibōzu • Deborah P Kolodji
You Dream in Creatures • Herb Kauderer
Dragon King Of The Southern Sea • Mary Soon Lee
Lost Doors In Sunken Cities • Charles Payseur
Deep Diving • Kurt Newton
Whales • Christina Sng
Becoming • Miguel O. Mitchell
Selachimorphosis • Deborah L. Davitt
Under the Skin • Brian Hugenbruch
<cecaelia> • Joshua St. Claire
Animal • Rebecca Bratten Weiss
The Lay of the Anguished Sea-Beast • Malina Douglas
Unfathomable • Joe Dolce
Afterlife • F. J. Bergmann
A Keen for the Sea King’s Daughter • Holly Lyn Walrath
Swanroad • Ricardo Jaimes Freyre, translated from the Spanish by Brittany Hause
<sturgeon moon> • Nick Hoffman
Liminality in the Seafoam • Koji A. Dae
Songless • Cislyn Smith
<seeking…> • Lauren McBride
The Fish-Men Remember • N. C. Krueger
The Eye of the Kraken • Beth Cato
<there was a nymph> • Barun Saha
<attempting first contact> • Nick Hoffman
Aegean Pools • John Muro



The Standard Model of Shoals

Surf, Island of Shoals, Childe Hassam, 1913
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The sea crashes against rocks and is smashed
into leptons. Collapsing immediately back

into nuclei. Atoms–water–force of nature.
Scattered into splotches of paint representing

rocks, coral, crabs, fish. Swimming in harmonic
backwash. Gently rolling in and out. Over

and over. Saltating sand between pebbles.
Rolling back and forth but not abandoning

burrowed niche. Carved by time and energy.
Strings stretching and returning to form.

Pushing and pulling the pebbles. Bouncing
sand grains up and down. Top, bottom, charm

quarks. Trapped in Higg’s ocean. It is only energy
that flows. Waves lifting water. Collapsing

back down. As energy moves through. Only
the last wave breaking. On rocks and beach.

Each subatomic particle—of water molecules—
hydrogen and oxygen—atom’s nuclei.

Executing wave function. Modulated amplitudes
and frequencies. Waves materializing on horizon.

—Bradley Earle Hoge


Bone Necklace

made a fine necklace
from the mermaid bones I found
where oceans once laid

seemed to call to me
maybe I imagined it
either way was real

when I wear the bones
I smell the oceans that were
under bluest skies

when I wear the bones
I swim through the old currents
coolness of the flow

when I wear the bones
I talk to all the sea life
whose names time forgot

when I wear the bones
I see all that flew above
listen to their splash

this made me wonder
if man ever existed
left no bones behind

—Juan Manuel Pérez


Sea Gods

The god of sharks is stillness,
the hallowed shadow of motion.

The god of humpbacks is voice,
his notes shaking the currents.

Eight are the gods of octopuses,
never glimpsed, shrouded in ink.

Legion are the gods of plankton,
invisible, omnipresent plurality.

The goddess of pelicans is vast;
in her beak she carries worlds.

The god of coral is the death
that births the universe.

Dolphins have no gods, no worship,
making merry with each other.

The ocean is goddess in herself,
dancing to the call of the Moon.

—Mary Soon Lee


The Sea Shares Her Origin Story

I was not always the sea.
Long, long ago, I walked the earth
alongside all the other Animal People—
those with two legs and four legs,
six legs and eight legs and more.
How many legs did I have? It matters not,
I did not keep them long. I used them
to chase down other Animal People, I
was always hungry and never satisfied, I
swallowed everyone I could catch, everyone
who came into my path, my sole driving force
the desire to fill my vast emptiness.

When the Changer came along
and asked each of us what we wanted to be
I said I want to be full and never feel empty again.
And the Changer heard my hollow spirit
through my words and felt sorry for me, for
of all the Animal People that roamed the world then
I was by far the loneliest and most nugatory,
consisting only of my own form and whatever
scraps of substance I could cling to from those
I swallowed; that was never enough.
Little One, the Changer said to me, I grant
you this request: cease feeling empty.

And with a touch I was transformed
into the great, vast sea
full of creatures and plants and
mysteries of the deep, endlessly
filling and refilling with birth and death,
with bodies of ships and of humans
seduced by the lure of my beauty and depth,
infected with my old, aching void,
longing to satisfy an emptiness
they cannot escape and do not understand.
 
Come, I say to them, and I will sing you lullabies
and rock you to sleep, to dream in the deep—
 
 For I am never empty, and like you, never satisfied.

—Melissa Ridley Elmes


The Cove

Blood in the water

We were happy
Free, playing, hunting
Swimming wherever, whenever
We wished
Trusting each other
No boundaries, no fear from your boats
We raced the wake, we made you laugh

Blood in the water

That place used to be sacred to us
The cove you made a ring of death
Of kidnapping, tearing family groups
Apart for your own amusement
Then slaughtering the rest
We understand hunting
We even understand sport killing
But this...

Blood in the water

There’s death in the cove again
But this time we’re observers not victims
The sun was blotted out by
Whale-shaped forms
Filling the sky with roars like walruses
Launching harpoons of fire
Into your dwellings

Blood in the water

Your ships bob on the waves
Empty now, no danger to us
Your bodies litter the shore
Some of you made it to the water
Trying to swim away from the sky fire
Could we have saved you?
We used to do that for humans
But not here, not in this cove
If there’s blood in this water
Let it be yours

—Gerri Leen


Below the Waves

I wander coral reef catacombs  
swimming deeper in black waters  
with webbed feet,  
my lidless eyes watching giant squids scurry 
through the tall mounds of slender eyestalks  
swaying with the currents.  
I descend algae-formed stairs   
listening to the ocean’s languid silence 
whisper ancient secrets. 
Before an enormous sepulcher 
I shout with gilled lungs. 
Cold, colossal stone doors slowly open 
and I am embraced by 
a multitude of tentacles 
as I join my family. 

—Chad Hensley


Salmon Ladder
Ballard Locks, Seattle

Far beneath the sea
is a kingdom
comprised of many cities where the citizens
have eight arms apiece
and eight fingers on a hand
and it is said
that this kingdom beneath the sea
possesses the most marvelous mechanics, cunning craftsmen,
and mysterious magicians.
The entire population of this undersea kingdom
is plagued by the same dream,
a thirst to see the sky;
to drink the golden rays of the sun
directly from the heavens—
a chance to kiss the breeze.
The people willingly transform themselves
into the shapes of salmon
surrendering their underwater cities
to make the long pilgrimage to land.
The salmon people swim
for leagues and leagues,
cresting ocean, wave, harbor,
river, creek and mountain.
They climb to spawn
and then die,
their children knowing
the kiss of the breeze,
the taste of the sun
before they leave
to find the undersea city once again.

—Gary Every


The Kings of New Atlantis

The beauty and silliness of jellyfish
obscured their evolutionary brilliance and seniority.
A public relations campaign was required to justify
the cost of transporting them to New Atlantis, the first
habitable ocean world found within Terra’s reach.

In the end, Marcus Leung, an advertising executive,
mined the simple truth that the stylish umbrellas of
Medusozoa were actually the sexually reproducing life stage
of a class of brainless sea creatures. This struck a chord
with the taxpaying public, though they could not say why.

They all understood turning off their brains at the
end of the workday and getting dressed up in their pretties
for a night on the town. Word of mouth publicity won out.

So one of the oldest lifeforms
on Earth become one of the oldest lifeforms on a new planet
even if their tenure was measured in years instead of
hundreds of millions of years.

Serena Collucci led the project to outfit the jellies
with sensors and tiny bionic controllers.
Jelly exploration teams mapped the world in months.

Sea-bottom domes were ideally placed. Floating cities
rode currents coordinated with orbiting communication satellites.
Carefully balanced plants and animals flourished
in a new and unpolluted world, and jellies were the kings.

Once the civil war started, Stephen Xenophon was quick
to embrace the military uses of jellyfish
who were not only great spies, but fast and strong enough
to transport bombs, and sabotage enemies by
clogging life support systems. The other side
copied immediately. Within months all human habitats
were destroyed, and soon after, all humans were dead, too.

Four million years later,
when sentient life next landed
on a now-nameless ocean world,
the jellies danced and displayed.
The newcomers admired their hardiness

and thought of ways to harness the animals.
But the wisest among the visitors
persuaded them all to leave the kings

of New Atlantis to rule their own domain.
And the aliens
paid their respects,
and left.

—Herb Kauderer


Umibōzu

false calm
monster waves open
to swallow a ship

an eye’s drowning gleam
seafaring bribe

arms
or tentacles?
a shadow emerges

danger
deepening
goblin sharks

dragonfish swim
in submarine canyons

scooping confusion
of a bottomless barrel
bioluminescence

—Deborah P Kolodji


You Dream in Creatures

Why am I so obsessed with mermaid art?
            —Eve Westvillage

Because you not only dream in colors
you dream in creatures

and there is
no more diverse place than the ocean.
You long to swim among
the greatest variety of living creations
anywhere.

You feel
beyond mere human limits,
beyond the reach of costumes and makeup
and special effects.

Your inner shape-shifter yearns
to become not either/or, but more, to become
not otter or pirate or silkie
but human
and
all those other things, too, in turns.

And your obsessions always return to the sea
to the mermaid, to Homo syreni
who can embrace the murky indefinable lifeforms
of the deep waters
without losing her humanity.

You would be the leader that shows society
how to love that which is strange and terrifying
but beautiful and mysterious,
a part of each of us denied on the surface,
hidden by millennia of conventions.

Your soul reaches out for mermaid art
because you are willing
to stare into the Mariana Trench
and see yourself there
dark
brooding
unexpected
and unimaginable.

You study oils and statues
and paint your own canvases
to see
what remains invisible
to the mirror
knowing that your transformation
will arrive in the fullness of time.
We’re all waiting…

—Herb Kauderer


Dragon King Of The Southern Sea

Wake, Ao Qin, Cinnabar Dragon,
wake, Most Vermilion One,
wake, Dragon King of the Southern Sea,
wake from your dream of summer,
the warm monsoon blowing wet,
wave waters welling,
rising moonward.

Wake, Cinnabar Dragon,
wake, Horned One,
wake, Bestower of Rain,
wake from your dream of summer,
wake your brothers,
wake your crab generals,
wake your ranks of shrimp soldiers.

Wake, Cinnabar Dragon,
sleeping under the tides,
wake from your dream of summer—
the waters are rising,
ice melting in monsoon warmth,
coasts awash, cities drowning—
wake, Most Vermilion One, wake.

—Mary Soon Lee


Lost Doors In Sunken Cities

In a briny hallway a diver watches
an octopus scuttle
where once an ancient human walked
dreaming of a world he couldn’t reach
a safety his heart had never known.

Across the distance between stars
his wanting touched
a reflected need
so powerful that spacetime folded
punched through.

On two worlds two empty beds
two doorways
their glow fading
while a galaxy away
two people find what they’ve been missing.

The diver doesn’t know
cannot taste the lingering freedom
but still he swims deeper
pulled by a desire
he mistakes as a hunt for Atlantis.

He dreams of a figure in the deep
who will understand him,
lead him into a future
he can breathe
like water through gills.

The flooded chamber pulses
and in a different sea
on a different world
a merman presses a hand to his heart
the yearning more than he can bear.

There is light
and the octopus flattens angrily
ready to fight or flee
only to find
the room otherwise empty.

Under a distant star,
under the blanket of the ocean
two figures circle, hesitantly touch
feel in the other
a familiar loneliness, already fading.

—Charles Payseur


Deep Diving

I set off to sail the Outer Reaches
in my space charter The Stone-Skipper,
I needed to get away, clear my head,
but I was never good at forgetting.

I was booked up with high rollers,
weekend adventurers looking for thrills.
First stop: Europa,
a celestial hotspot for extreme surfers.

We skipped along the splotchy surface,
until we reached the entry point:
a linear fracture that would take us down deep
into the salty thick ocean below.

The Stone-Skipper projected just enough light
for the high rollers to selfie stream.
There were shaka signs and tongues wagging
as we rode the electromagnetic waves.

Unfortunately, I could see her face reflected
in every bubbling sulfurous column.
I was glad to finally leave Europa
for our next deep-sea destination:

Enceladus, where only the most daring dive,
where the ghosts of previous failures
are like No Trespassing signs
for the thin-skinned or the weak-hearted.

My charters trusted my enthusiasm
but were unaware of my mission:
a need to forget, a need to absolve,
even if it meant our mutual oblivion.

As we descended through a hydrothermal vent,
into the methane-rich quicksilver sea,
it was obvious from the outset
the Stone-Skipper had met its match.

The turbulence was a nonstop staccato
of teeth-jarring rock-and-roll fury.
Needless to say, the high rollers were loving it,
proclaiming it the gnarliest of the gnarly.

But the Stone-Skipper developed micro-fractures,
and we were drooling oxygen like a teething infant.
Red streamers trailed in our wake
like blood from a bleeding heart.

And there she was admonishing me,
shaking her head with an I told you so glare.
I hit the emergency nano-shield button
and skipped out the nearest cryovolcano.

I should have known my quest for oblivion
would be as futile as my will power.
I could travel to the Outer Reaches and beyond
and she was always going to be with me.

So, I set sail for Earth,
dropping my charters at the Planetary Bar & Grill.
They gave me a collective thumbs up
for the good time had by all.

But I had unfinished business,
as the Stone-Skipper landed in the Pacific
and dove deep into the Marianas Trench
to the place where the accident happened.

At 8,000 meters, I parked on a narrow ledge,
then turned off the Stone-Skipper’s lights.
The darkness was all-encompassing,
and as crushing as the void.

Her body was down there somewhere,
an extreme burial for an extreme explorer.
We were tethered but her suit had malfunctioned,
and I had to cut her loose.

Ever since then I’d been running,
chasing death in the valley of the stars,
hoping to one day join her
but too spineless to follow through.

It was then, outside my window, I saw them,
creatures adapted to the blackened depths,
bioluminescent crowns and necklaces
worn like regal jewelry.

Amid the wonder, I heard her voice.
It wasn’t your fault, she said.
It was as if the weight of all the ocean had lifted
and I became as buoyant as jellyfish.

And so now I honor her memory,
with deep-sea dives to help the helpless
to find what’s been lost or forgotten
and maybe fix what’s been broken along the way.

—Kurt Newton


Whales

Radiation kills us if we breach the surface.

So we stay beneath the mile-thick ice
and evolve thick blubber
to keep us warm, feeding on brine
and the occasional deep sea creature
that wanders into our territory.

It’s been an age since we moved
beneath Europa’s surface,
the first of us scarred
and nearly infertile
from the blast of Jupiter’s radiation.

Yet each generation evolved
to live in this new place.
We have no choice.
Earth is scorched and burned,
inhospitable to most life.

We now look gray and mottled,
our mouths extruded to filter
Europa’s plankton, rows of teeth
sharpened to chew thick stringy flesh
beneath a dense fat layer.

Our tails and fins stretch wide
and strong to plough through
the heavy water and battle
the fierce, fast-swimming natives
that never fail to keep attacking us.

Now, a blinding light from above
alerts us to a new threat.
The elders tell of an ancient enemy
that has followed us from the old world.
They are primitive but cruel.

Merciless.
World destroyers.
We agree to annihilate them
before they take over our planet
and claim it for their own.

They send an eye down to search for us
but I crush it with my powerful maw.
A larger eye appears shortly after,
firing bolts of fire that sear our flesh.
We disperse—

Hiding out in the deeper, heavier waters
where they do not dare reach.
Then a fleet of eyes appear,
sending a message in our language:
“We come in peace.”

“Lies!”
The elders tell us,
but we are intrigued,
venturing out to communicate.
Perhaps they are not beasts.

“Earth is gone.
We ask to share your world.
To share the plankton.
We will stay near the surface
And do you no harm.”

“Kill them, kill them all,”
The elders beg.
“Humans only destroy.
They destroyed Earth once,
sending us here to escape.

They polluted our oceans,
leaving most of us dead.
If only we had the wisdom then
to send waves to drown their cities
and melt ice to sink their lands.”

But we relent, hoping for peace.
We were all Earthlings once.

—Christina Sng


Becoming

Meter-wide glassine spheres
by the thousands
eggs of a mother long dead
bobbing on frothing waves
translucent, rainbow skin shimmering
from the glow of two moons
one green with life, one dead
both full on a cool night

The orange sun rises
heating the spheres
waking their passengers
hopping inside, forward ho
launch, smack, roll
magnetically driven
an iron neural itch
polar orientation
toward survival

Bouncing and spraying
attracting the Enemy
looking for breakfast
rushing up with spines
piercing, charged, emf blast
spheres explode
ripping fangs
churn bright blue blood

But close so close
the land the sacred place
and some few arrive
upon the sandy beach
their brethren gone
to feed the sea

The next phase clicks
metamorphosis
shell hardened
days later
first cracks
smoke and flame
emergence
jade green serpents
malachite scales
golden eyes narrowed
belching birthing fire
on fuel that burns in water
roaring

They undulate toward the sea
glide into the welcome water
a threat no longer
remembering the Enemy
a smoldering racial enmity
prey and predator
role reversal
an eternal cycle

—Miguel O. Mitchell


Selachimorphosis

Fire blooms along the hull
just above the waterline

the wind that bellies out the sails
whips the waves,
feeds the flames.

Do I smell cordite and smoke?
I can taste the salt on my tongue
from the sea,
or maybe from blood.

Another broadside shakes the hull,   
and then I’m flying over the side,
screaming into the roar of cannons—
my shipmates won’t hear me till the battle’s done.

Perhaps not even then;
a kind of deafness takes you
after you’ve listened to the cannon’s thunder
speaking, speaking, speaking.

The arms of dead men already cast overboard
tangle me like seaweed
and I fight them off
horror, disgust, fear
heart pounding—
no, you won’t get me too
is something moving below,
oh gods, don’t be a shark,
all teeth and dead eyes

—and then something latches onto a boot
and I kick frantically
eyes on the sails
on the Union Jack overhead—
Hail Britannia, full of grace
save me, save me

—another pull, and my head goes under
but the smiles that greet me
though full of razory teeth
are set in an almost-human faces--
tritons and nereids, sleek with scales, 
armed with ancient spears
some riding sharks,
others whales;

and they laugh as they hold me there
laugh as the cold water bursts in
through nose and mouth,
burning in my lungs
burning cold, burning death—

and then I shake myself, puzzled,
the water sleeking over my hide,
not understanding how I could have fallen asleep—
there’s blood in the water
carrion aplenty;
others of my kind are here
ready to feed
but the masters and mistresses
won’t let us,
no matter how our hunger
makes our eyes roll back,

not till they’ve collected 
their fair share of spoils
from the tithe of flotsam and jetsam
poured out into their father’s waves.

—Deborah L. Davitt


Under the Skin

The hardest part was drilling through the ice:
a solid substrate wrapped around the moon
Europa, Jupiter’s child. While from afar
she gave insouciant vibes, the waves below
ran deep, as waters often do, and she
had taken pains to keep the universe
from prying at her special point of view.

Invasive species such
as we aren’t prone to ask
permission, ’fore we dig.

We found a shallow spot, at some distance
from her freckles, and set the drones to work.
They had to heat the atmosphere above
the hole, for fear emergent water freezes
when it finds Europa’s sky; so we could
not watch them work—the air would kill us through
our suits and leave us smoking at her feet.

But we were given pause
by shadows moving deep
beneath the child’s ice.

Our satellites had often wondered if
beneath Europa’s skin were signs of life:
if it was made like us, was something we
could teach, or use. We did not stop to think
that when we found the water’s edge, the map
might clearly say that dragons wandered here,
and ice was all that kept them locked away.

The ice began to crack.
Our cameras never blinked,
but we turned tail and ran
too late.

—Brian Hugenbruch


 

cecaelia
forbidden entrances
all those tentacles

—Joshua St. Claire


Animal

I’m not like other men, he says.
You can trust me with your selkie skin.
I love the wildness of wild things, the
pelt of the otter streaming silver how
the hawk wings feather.

The man comes carrying flowers.
Be my animal, my angel. Wrap your six
legs round me close your six eyes when
I kiss your lips taste the nectar.
The man wants you to stay the night.

The man wants to see your cloven hoof
beneath your skirts, reminds you
other men might not like it much, this
goatlike prancing you do, might not like
your serpent self, the self that strangles.

The man would like to take you to dinner.
Let me sustain you with flies, he says,
He calls you his beautiful chimera. He offers
you moths and scarab beetles. I like
that you are a hungry one, he says.

When you arrive in your undead state he
says he likes that too. He reminds you, other
men wouldn’t be into this. He offers to unwind
your shroud and let your body walk free
silver slick from the embalmers.

The man is quite sure he has you now.
He says his little silver leash and wicker
cage are just for show. I like a strong
independent woman, he says, with hair like goats
eyes like doves a woman with a snake’s body.

There is more than one of you. I like that,
he says. I like that all of them are mine.
He wants to catch you down by the ocean shores,
pin you to the sand, feel you changing shapes
beneath him, feel all your bodies rise to his.

It’s okay for a day or two. But it gets old fast,
the moths and scarabs and metaphors and cages
and devotion. In the morning you set out, one
body alone, on the sand. You hear his footsteps
pounding after you. His voice enraged.

Monster, he cries. Monster.

—Rebecca Bratten Weiss


The Lay of the Anguished Sea-Beast

What can you know of us who lurk the deep?
When our spiny backs crest the waves,
you point at us, shrieking.
Stirring our irritation
till we slip beneath.

What do you call us, quivering on deck,
your grimy fingers pointing
till you scramble for weapons,
matchstick swords and spears with needle points.
We are nothing if not mighty:
twenty meters of scale-clad muscle, spine and plume;
rows of razor-sharp teeth that glimmer
when we smile—

With what you find repellent, our sharp teeth,
we lift our young with a tenderness unseen
and glide on ocean currents.
To gather once each hundred years
in a place your prodding ships can’t reach
where cold waves crash and currents swirl deadly,
and we rise to the surface, lift our great scaled heads and sing—

Of love and rage, of men’s misunderstandings—
calling us monsters, dinosaurs, Nessie—
calling us vicious fictions,
fanciful, imagined
while scales slide against each other, real
as shell and bone.
We’ll sing a lament of loved ones lost
and cannons booming,
of sailors that swarmed like angry ants to the rails
as their beady eyes watched us, their mouths spat out curses,
their trick and betrayal—

The boy’s piping voice assuring safety,
one of our brethren raising her head up,
the net flung down, harpoons like stinging urchins,
her howls of rage and pain.
The tide surging red, the sailors’ shrieks like gulls,
screeching for fish as they pecked her apart.
Her severed head raised,
her eyes gone glassy,
while her mangled body sank
to the sea floor to be picked apart by crabs.
We sing our pact as we gather, swearing vengeance
our oath to hunt the sea forever more,
churning waves with our claws, wrecking ships
on sharp rocks, biting into the
soft flesh of sailors and swallowing bones,
refusing to leave you remnants,
while we drift deeper,
to the watery place where science sloshes fable,
where up and down can no more be distinguished
and stranger things drift through the inky depths.

Be assured, we pursued that ship,
smacked the sea with our tails
till waves washed over the deck
and men ran frenzied,
shouting senseless orders.
We scratched our backs on the barnacled hull,
and gave a push. The ship capsized
sailors yelled, wood splintered
and snapping jaws bit into squirming men.
Flesh tasted sour with fear,
the sea seethed dark with blood
and her head sank,
freed.

Now her skull rests on a rock ledge,
a reminder
That the days when we were kind to men
have vanished on the breeze.

In the depths, jaws open to sing our mourning,
the sea-beast’s anguish.
But I fear you would mistake it for an unschooled roar,
the booming of a wave.

—Malina Douglas


Unfathomable

The gills started growing
in the eighth year of lockdown.
The shuttle had brought back
a strain of virus so virulent,
nothing could stop it.
I think our bodies knew the spores
couldn’t survive in seawater
and so began reconstructing us
to survive.

It has been ten years
beneath the waves
and what remains of the race
has adapted remarkably.
Our skin is now green-brown
and a clear translucent film
covers eyes, and, of course,
webbing between toes and fingers.

The majority of us
live in communities,
mainly for protection,
and to abate loneliness.
My family and I prefer
to live apart, deeper down,
where it’s cooler,
and less hectic.

Occasionally, we holiday
to the surface, letting the sun
remind us of our youth,
floating briefly, under the warmth,
gazing at the edge of land mass
off in the distance,
as unfathomable to our grandchildren,
as the sea once was to us.

—Joe Dolce


Afterlife

They told him to think of the future,
of the blood-dark seas’ inevitable rise.
A group of them were standing
on the porch when he answered
the doorbell, their fish-mouths gaping.
They gave him literature, damp
with sea-water, imprinted with fins
and gills. The hook, they said, making
a curled gesture in the air, descended
for everyone. He involuntarily
looked up toward the skies, where
mackerel-patterned clouds appeared
to glow with their own light.

—F. J. Bergmann


A Keen for the Sea King’s Daughter

The princess is dead—
She’s laid up in the castle chapel,
hair bound in ruddy sailor’s knots
dress the color of morning tide
skin as pale and fae as starlight
—and the waves are rising on the shore.

The harbor is at peace and fishermen
mark the crying of the waves
with flowers they heave in droves
over the bow into the stillness,
the rushy voices of coral sharpness
singing a clear, yet hollow dirge
for their queen’s earthbound soul.

They pay their respects
to her who was curst-bound to one man
and worse, chained in a mortal cage
for all loved the gentle woman
who once lived among the good people
but setting eyes upon a mortal prince
gave up her elemental body.

The prince mourns on his rampart
mouth soured of all the music of love
and knows he might fight the tide
with sand and rock and beam
but his voice echoes in the village
and in the woods and in the hollows
and breaking upon the rocks
with a hoarse and melancholy murmur.

We have come,
the waves whisper in the voice
of the prince’s beloved girl,
to take back that which is ours.

The Sea King stretches out his triton.

The sea takes the village
and all the people,
it takes the castle,
and the prince with his lute,
it takes the chapel
where his daughter sleeps
until the waters reclaim their birthright.

Today, kind visitor, you may visit that place
and look upon the chapel’s cross
and the dune-graves where the people of that shore
still ship their dead to serve the Sea King’s daughter
in coffins abandoned amongst the nests of gulls
and it is said at night the waves awaken,
and given human form, walk upon the earth
like ghostly priests twice cursed
to retrieve the coffins and their treasure
and carry them to sea,
forever doomed to bury the dust of earth
at the orders of their ghostly mistress.

—Holly Lyn Walrath


El camino de los cisnes

Crespas olas adheridas a las crines
de los ásperos corceles de los vientos;
alumbradas por rojizos resplandores,
cuando en yunque de montañas su martillo bate el trueno.

Crespas olas que las nubes oscurecen
con sus cuerpos desgarrados y sangrientos,
que se esfuman lentamente en los crepúsculos.
Turbios ojos de la Noche, circundados de Misterio.

Crespas olas que cobijan los amores
de los monstruos espantables en su seno,
cuando entona la gran voz de las borrascas
su salvaje epitalamio como un himno gigantesco.

Crespas olas que se arrojan a las playas
coronadas por enormes ventisqueros,
donde turban con sollozos convulsivos
el silencio indiferente de la noche de los hielos.

Crespas olas que la quilla despedaza
bajo el rayo de los ojos del guerrero,
que ilumina las entrañas palpitantes
del Camino de los Cisnes para el Rey del Mar abierto.

—Ricardo Jaimes Freyre (1866–1933)

* * *

Swanroad

Fretted waves clutching at the manes
of the rugged horses of the wind,
limned by fiery flashes when their hammer’s fall
strikes lightning from the anvil of the cliffs.

Fretted waves darkened by the torn
and hemorrhaging bodies of the clouds
that slowly bleed away into the dusk.
Night’s murky eyes, ensconced in Mystery.

Fretted waves that house within their breast
the loves of ghastly monsters, when the great
voices of the tempest rumble out
their wild wedding songs like giant hymns.

Fretted waves that hurl themselves in droves
onto shorelines draped in massive drifts of snow,
their spasmodic sobs disrupting
the impassive silence of the glacial night.

Fretted waves the keel rips to shreds
beneath the keen eyes of the warrior, whose gaze
pierces the pulsing depths of the Swanroad
traveled by the King of the High Seas.

—translated from the Spanish by Brittany Hause


 

sturgeon moon
           tails entwined
                      the mer couple
                                drifting, drifting

—Nick Hoffman


Liminality in the Seafoam

I was always afraid
to bring my children
to the beach,
currents, undertows, and sleeper waves
threatened to swallow them.

What kind of monster
mother was I
to abandon them
to stinging, biting, and piercing
sea creatures of the deep?

In my fear
I never imagined
the true risk
in sun-dappled days
and lulling waves.

My son learned to swim
better than he could walk,
disappearing beneath the water,
coming up spouting
stories of mythical creatures.

Ones that couldn’t be
that never had been
that were “just stories, babe”
jellyfish can’t sing
and people can’t breathe beneath

Don’t go beneath my love
stay at the surface
with me and sanity.
But the hiss of sea foam
called to him.

It bubbled and demanded,
a stronger siren
than a mother’s arms.
that tickled his brown skin
and kissed the tips
of his sun-bleached hair.

He brought up precious shells
I didn’t know were a parting gift.
I threw them away
wanting no reminders
of that magical place.

He told stories of a mermaid
that I didn’t listen to
on the sleepy drive home.
She sang to him
and promised him adventures.

When we returned
he ran into the foam
and dove into the depths
and did not surface.

I called to the breakers—
no sign of him
except a flash…
a girl with a tail
holding his hand
dragging him along
to her world of song
and color.

I hope he finds castles
beyond his imagination,
a friend who listens to his stories,
and love beyond his mother.

But if I ever see a woman
with the tail of a fish,
I’ll flay her
for supper.

—Koji A. Dae


Songless

The mermaid in the lake 
likes the way the rain echoes through the water
each droplet another pulse of life
each flash of lightning drawing her to the surface
damp hair clinging to her cheeks
mouth open to take in mist and moisture from the air
each impact whispers 
spring
and change
and chances 
for something different
no matter the time of year

It calls her
she tells herself that’s why
you come with the storms 
washed in with the wind
that you feel the weight of the drops
and their promise, too

She does not sing
not since she left the ocean
not since the net and the needles
and the way the world shrank so small
her songs were never gentle arias
or siren melodies to enchant wayward sailors
nothing so fancy
she misses harmonizing with dolphins
and conversing with whales
she swims in shallows now
and longs for all the ways 
music could light up the deep

But her throat stills and her lips press close
when she remembers the shattering glass 
the splintery boat
your gentle hands
that spilled her into this freshwater expanse
so she will not sing for you
even when you stand on the shore
and serenade

She remembers your voice
the cadence of your speech
the timbre and tone of your words
when you pressed your hands flat against the hateful tank
and kept her company when no one else would.

The mermaid does not forget
the sharp tang of cleaning fluid in the bucket
the angle of the mop
the crack that broke that world
and the way your words
have always sunk like stones
deep

So when the driving wind pushes you
again and again
to the middle of the rainy lake
your small craft spinning slowly
she stays just beneath the surface
a lurking shadow
and listens as you pour your woes into the rippling water
each sorrow and confession another drop
melting into the mere
each regret bleeding into the rest

She hauls you back to shore
when you’ve fallen asleep
exhausted, lonely
empty bottles rattle roll in the bottom of your boat.
She slips silent through the storm waves
pulls the blanket 
neatly folded as always
from beneath the middle seat
covers you up so you won’t catch cold
the way humans do

Her fingers are deft from years of practice
when she ties your boat to the dock
She won’t answer your questions
She won’t return your voice with hers

But she knows you, and you know her
and between you is a wavering truth
flicker flitting like light through kelp
hard to hold but undeniably bright
that you’re not the only one
living in entirely the wrong place
that the story still hasn’t ended
and you may yet find a path
to the sea
together

—Cislyn Smith


 

seeking
marine dwelling,
plastic-eating aliens

Earth’s oceans
move-in-ready
rent-free

—Lauren McBride


The Fish-Men Remember

O, for days when we were young
and the lands were younger still
and the trilobites were dancing
on the plankton-sodded hill!
 
In the fifth day of creation,
when the fishes came to birth
and the ocean churned with rum-salt
and our songs were full of mirth;
 
When we took the road to Crabhead
under waters sunlight-fresh,
then in South Atlantis taverns
raised a toast to mortal flesh.
 
Next day, the westward current
to the coral-studded heights
where the dolphins walked on water
and the starfish flew their kites;
 
When the reefs were shod with moonlight
for the lovers and the krill,
when the whales would chant their knowledge
when all fish could eat their fill.
 
Then the salt-magic was common
and the old way not unknown
and we had not yet forgotten
what was spoken in our bones.
 
But now we walk in silence,
with our eyes so dark and strange
on land-mens’ ceaseless bustle
and know that all has changed.
 
And though we know not whether,
and though we know not how—
we wait to be remembered
just as I remember now.

—N. C. Krueger


The Eye of the Kraken

the night’s storm had carried the kraken
high upon the beach and rocks
such a thing hadn’t occurred
since my grandparents’ youth, but oh
memories were still bright about how
its salted meat saved our village through
the next two winters, that its scales
still shielded our warriors in battle

I was just one of many children underfoot
as knives were sharpened and cauldrons readied
but unlike my brothers, who used their daggers
to slice off scales for necklaces, I
found myself standing beside a head longer
than my own body, staring into a
round, lidless black eye

and within its depths I saw the world
beneath the sea, and colors my mind could
grasp as well as a handful of dry sand
and I saw boats unlike ours, much bigger
with cloth sails so large they could
dress my village entire, and I saw blood,
and myself older, stronger, tired
and I felt the squeezing pressure of a
god’s hand clench the kraken and offer it
to us, just as we had sent many, many
offerings her way

my grandmother hobbled beside me
saying nothing for a while as everyone else
prepared for feasting and fun
“the eye will be yours,” she murmured
and I nodded, for I knew
she still possessed the eye of the kraken
that came when she was my age, and how
she had used its sight to guide us

drums and flutes began to play
I stayed as if anchored by the heaviness
of my future, until the eye’s reflection
showed me revelry, and I realized
that those strange ships were still
so very distant
and now was the time to dance

—Beth Cato


 

there was a nymph
who sang near the shores

man after man
swam the lyrical waves
and came back

with gills

—Barun Saha


 

attempting first contact…
Ligeia’s pale waves
recede from my touch

—Nick Hoffman


Aegean Pools

The last of the receding tides 
settles like glaze in deep crevices 
of coral leaving cauldrons of porous 
rock with a virulent blue so pure, 
so lavish, so filled with afternoon 
sky, I’d readily bypass the mouth’s 
cold chalice and narrow candle of throat 
and inject it whole. To hurry the feel, 
without faltering, of dazzling azure 
as it diffuses like an accelerant inside 
the body, bubbling spume, expelling 
a life’s worth of afflictions. Besotted, 
I’d hear the saline course across 
the ancient aqueducts of the heart 
and between the rungs of my ribs,
spooling through misshapen threads 
of sinew; traversing trenches of 
marrow; then towering up and into 
the ruffled blossom of brain.  
Jeweled flesh—fully infused—
and soul embrace the purge and
sweet corruption of bone and body. 
And I see that I’ve become an 
enflamed, blue-bright ghost, 
unshelled and in damaged glory, 
to taste, at last, this beckoning, 
bountiful and alien world. 

—John Muro