The Mermaid of South Mark Road

Her doublewide is plopped down in the desert

like a shipwreck

on the moon. She swats off

a bouncing pitbull

paddles through the oily creosote

of her cratered yard

and bends

into my cab.

It looks like someone took an ice pick

to the front of her neck

which puckered when it healed

as if it wants a kiss.

Her voice comes straight

from her gut, a scissors

hiss, blended

with a phlegmy gurgle, horrible

to hear, and to try to

understand.

She was married once.

They used to go fishing together

back in Illinois

but he’s gone now breathing

someone else’s air

and there is very little water

here.

She tried going back home last year

and ended up fishing alone

on her daddy’s old pond

with its green scummy skin

and not even catching a fucking catfish

while the gnats swarmed to her second mouth

and crawled inside her.

She thought if she fell in

she’d sink

like a stone angel.

That would probably have been best,

she says to me,

looking out the cab window at all the sand

of an ocean dead

for centuries

and rubbing her thin

dry arms.

END