My Son in the Sea
Somehow he knows he can breathe in both
water and air. See how he grows piscine,
dull on land, iridescent in the deep.
Delicate flesh of my blood and my bone.
How many bodies can this world hold?
Men want to examine where exactly
skin meets scale. You can’t have it both ways,
choose: man or fish? Not a man, say the men.
Don’t listen to them, sing the sirens,
preening their feathers (being as they are
part woman, part bird). What will the fish say?
Neptune, I’m counting on you in your pearl
and coral grotto, where distinctions are not
so brightly lit, where seahorses are not
horses, where starfish are not fish, but stars.
(first appeared, The Collagist: Issue 70, May 2015)
Xmas Cocktails, 1974
My mother slicked dates with cream cheese, spiraled each
in bacon, skewered flesh with plastic party picks—
those tiny swords I longed to brandish but am not
allowed to touch. There is a man, she says, wiping her hands
on her apron, who might tell you you’re pretty.
He might try to kiss you under the mistletoe hung
in the foyer. I should not show him my toys, my
room. She will be busy being the hostess.
Don’t eat the olives, she says. The olives
glisten in the dining room in a cut glass dish.
I slide my fingertips into their hollows and flash
my hand as if manicured in black. Five salty bites.
The doorbell’s dinging, and chattering smothers
the carols from the stereo. All these people
smoking on our sofas, cackling with their teeth.
My party dress is stiff and scratches. I tap my feet
like Shirley Temple but they’re sweaty and pinched
in lacy anklets and red patent Mary Janes.
I spin and spin until my crinolines lift
above my scabby knees. The room keeps lurching
long after I stop. The man has arrived. He’s all
dressed up in a three-piece suit, dark hair swept stiff.
He stands in the foyer, smiling wide. How pretty,
Princess, he says, and inquires about my dress: Does it spin?
Lisa Zerkle’s poems have appeared in Quartet, Heavy Feather Review, The Collagist, Nimrod, and storySouth, among others. She was the creator and curator of 4X4CLT, a public art and poetry series for Charlotte Lit. In January 2023, she was awarded an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College.