Mermaids

by Laura Foley

 
The agile octopus hunter passes
as we rest on slippery wet rocks,
his long-pronged fork just right to find and net
presa viva, she explains,
uno cazador de pulpos, her Spanish tongue
lisping her z’s, rolling her r’s
in the way I love, this woman
whose voice when I first heard
meant one day, surely, we’d go
someplace exotic to New England—
Honduras, Venezuela or,
as it turns out,
sitting on mossy stones in Galicia,
three hundred miles into our
non-faith-based trek,
to a holy Catholic site,
our gay wedding a year in the past,
as she explains how you never stab an octopus
because the ink,
as the black-clad, nimble sea god
brandishes his trident in scampering past,
letting us mermaids be.


* * * * *

"Mermaids" was previously published in Laura Foley's 2022 poetry collection Everything We Need.

Laura Foley is the author of eight poetry collections. Everything We Need: Poems from El Camino was released, in winter 2022. Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review, was among their top poetry books of 2019, and won an Eric Hoffer Award. Her collection It's This is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. Her poems have won numerous awards, and national recognition—read frequently by Garrison Keillor on The Writers Almanac; appearing in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry.
 
Laura lives with her wife, Clara Gimenez, among the hills of Vermont. www.laurafoley.net