Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

Mermaids

So long I’ve sat astride the razor-edge—
Coffee-cold against April window panes—
Mud foreclosure-sign-pasted April skies—

Corners gather dust, generate slut’s wool—
My bed: notebooks & pens sprawl at my feet—
Something’s to be said of a dying century—

When the world turns itself inside-out—
Bud-tight winter promises turn flowers—
Iron waves, & there’s salt to weigh—

Half mammal, half fish, I walk riverbanks
along the blue clay edge where the landscape
turns cloud-scraped mountains that drain to valleys—

Where all valleys empty down to the wild sea—
When mermaids come, to us they’ll look like dolphins
bob sleek emerald-green-black sea darkness—

When the mermaids come, they’ll sing like sirens
awoken from myths we no longer know—
When mermaids come to us, their ocean teeth

will snarl, gnash, & shred the end of the song—
Needles to bleed on— They’ll sing by thousands—
A song without any known names attached—

Chris Siteman’s poetry and essays have appeared in journals such as River Teeth, Sugar House Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, Salamander, The Worcester Review, and Consequence Magazine, among numerous others. He teaches in the English department at Suffolk University, and he lives in southern Maine.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx