I have a fish’s tale so I am not qualified to love you. *
I speak to the coral and seals; I do not speak your language.

I am told to hover near the reef every new moon and prepare myself.
I slip out of my skin and men think that I am any woman for them to have.
They want to have me as their woman.

Queues form down by the barrier reef, lines of sailors
and pub owners and fathers and husbands. They like
my slick skin, unlike their own, my lips
smooth as sea glass.

The next morning, as the sun stretches over the cliffs,
I slip back into my skin and go out to sea, leaving the men
to think they’ve been with an endangered woman,
they’ve made love to the dangerous whisper of “maybe.”

Well, I can not stay even when you visit the reef
every new moon and beg me to be your wife, the mother
to the five children who run in your yard, your lover.

They warned me about your fervent ways; once lying
with a woman in the reef, you want her to care for you, care for the children, make the porridge, sing the songs of her lost land, though you can’t make out the language.

My language is one that comes from far beneath the tongue.
I do not let men reach me there.

You are always the last one in line. I would think you
consider me used and dirty, but you
handle me like a starfish,
touching my mounds and crevasses, the tiny sparkling nodes
across my stomach.

And though I must refuse, I must admit that no one -
no one has ever run his hands across my stomach the way you have
or looked into the glass of my eyes and seen past the turbulent ocean.

10/03/2004

Author's Note: The first line comes from Amy Gerstler's "Siren" from her 1990 book, "Bitter Angel."

Posted on 10/04/2004
Copyright © 2026 Lisa Marie Brodsky