Helen Kitson
Mermaid’s purse
What does she buy, beneath the sea?
Full moon corals and oyster-spit pearls?
In her purse she keeps luminous eggs
That hatch into tiny blind things.
She is far away when they break
The membrane and taste the water.
I find a black purse discarded on the sand
And try to imagine the hatchlings,
A wriggling mass of baby sharks,
Their skin soft and vulnerable.
When the eggcase dries it feels like thin rubber:
A perfect artefact, with one small hole
Where life escaped and began the long swim
Home, past the sharp teeth, the plastic nets.
I look towards the thunderous waves
And wonder how many fish survived.
I imagine a shark with jagged teeth,
His mouth fixed into a wicked grin.
His blueprint is four hundred million years old:
He understands his environment, utterly.
I have unlearnt how to live in salt water,
Forgotten my ancestors. Whose blood is the
Coldest? (We need your eyes,
Your skin, your oil in gelatine capsules.)
The dice are loaded. At least one of us
Won’t get out of here alive.
Helen Kitson has published Love Among the Guilty (Bloodaxe 1995) and Tesserae (Oversteps 2004).
Page(s) 58
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The