How to Love a Mermaid by Darren Black

Replace reason with the green

Swells of algorithms

Foaming to meet your rocky perch.

The possibility of a tail

Scaled curves or eyes 

Urchin-colored, incalculable, awaits. 

A chance crease in the current

May gesture you in.

Don't offer shells!

There will be time enough to build

An altar.  Don't offer birds

Tiny lives that puzzle over

The silver hail of bullet fish below.

A driftwood crown 

Will not woo her 

To speak her name. 

Gather mists to scale your skin

Instead. Listen for gasps of waves.

Turn your back to the shore, the tongue 

Of smoke, uneven teeth of buildings--

The moon will choose you soon enough.

Darren Black resides on Massachusetts North Shore where he works as a vocational counselor.  He continues to hone his poetic skills in workshops and has studied in the Vermont College MFA program in the 1990's.  Darren hopes that a bit of queer sensibility and irony touches everything he writes.