The contents of the mermaid’s stomach are
laid out, neat rows on dirty trays,
to catalog our negligences and
enter the death knells in data tables.
Necroptic questions burble
up like the fountain of decomposition
that chased your scalpel and
spilled from the cavern where
otoliths entangled with bottle caps.
Why had she swallowed this cherry red pill
with Instant Winner scribed on the side once facing
something hardly more sustaining?
Was the earplug, faded to wasabi green,
a desirable spice for sashimi so fresh it wriggled
past last week’s undegradable brunch?
You reconstruct a formal meal of refuse,
imagine the cryptic dinner conversation
preceding this unusual mortality event.
A first course of fireworks, planktonic
sparks beyond their fizzle, exoskeletons
degrading but grizzled, paired with
krill and the grilling of a prime encounter:
Where do you see yourself in five years?
Further up the coast of Maui.
Sea-lettuce salads arrive sprinkled with
cigarette butt croutons, anchovies and
allusions to Caesar’s impending stabs
of indigestion as the tables turn.
How do you stay so fit? The date asks,
trusting her facade of satisfaction while
the truth churns against the fragments of
plastic packaging like roiling surf. I’m just
chasing the dream. Her dream is to feel
comfort. Her laugh is a geothermal vent.
Legacy organochlorines are biomagnified
in sea lion steak served rare beside a bed
of liquifying echinoderms. She’s gnawing
blubber to stave off the blubbering as a
fishing hook snags in her intestines, her next
line coils around the knot in her gut.
Is it wise to bring fry into an ocean like this?
Funerary balloons garnished their
dessert like rose petals, a torte
so flourless it’s inorganic, a slice of
styrofoam praised for its buoyancy.
Like her personality, the merfolk
who survived her may say, or the rot
that dragged her plight to the light.
Cameron E Quinn is a queer, genderfluid, neurodivergent artist from the Pacific Northwest who wields storytelling as an educational tool, from cozy libraries to stormy seas. They believe in uplifting the beauty of the world and kindling loves worth enacting change for. Visit TheCameronQuinn.com to explore more of their creative projects.
Photo by Annette Batista Day on Unsplash
