A 57-poem story-in-verse retelling of the original "The Little Mermaid" by Hans Christian Anderson

by kelly ann jacobson

Tail

Your ridged tail against the flat and gleaming
surface of the glass. First blue, then green,
the scales that sharpen up and smooth,
the monofin an anthias fluke—horns
of the devil, bucking bull—and you,
who wave yourself away from prying eyes.

<>-<>-<>

Turning

The water: warm, dark, safe.
Your tail floats back behind you,
whips you upward, floats you down.

They pound the glass with human fists…

…but your tail carries you to silence.

<>-<>-<>

Top

Bikini top with blue tie neck you wear
over a body suit. Nude. The hint of
skin. The man who hovers over water
tells you that it’s not to code,
by which he means human desire.

You remind him that you’re not to code
and then he grumbles,
This is why I hate to hire kids.

<>-<>-<>

Top II

The bra has scales that match your tail.
They scratch your arms, make holes that grow
so that you buy the suits in bulk
and keep them in your locker.

When you have a following
you throw the top away and buy
a green-blue swimsuit, sleeved to wrists.
I am the code, you say, and that dark
blurry mustache with the balding head
and tweed cap trying hard to mask it
nods and nods and nods.

<>-<>-<>

Water

Eighty degrees. Eight feet deep. Dyed
a blue you can’t describe. Not like the dark
of scales, but like a morning sky, so full
of promise. 16,000 gallons?
Rush of water from a hose to fill it.
Glimmers of fluorescent lights.
And home, home, home.

<>-<>-<>

Reef

They keep you in a cage they do not know
you’ve built—cement and metal, wall of thought,
like those against the pirates or the trap
of Romans—keep you in a falsehood,
sunken ship, rubble rug, anything that’s built
to stop.

And yet where there is hardness,
algae grows.

<>-<>-<>

Seaweed

Their hair afloat, it waves. A wind of want against the green.
All five: the girls you try to lose. A princess in your garden,
tending flowers, hearing sisters tell the stories of the moon—
and of the sixth, who soon would rise from beds of algae
to the rocks and dry your hair on air of men, the smell
so distant from the salt and rose-red flowers that you grew.
You never knew the same could flourish here. Or so they would
if you could close your eyes against the cultivated kelp,
or learn to see it as a stipe or frond—and not a blade.

<>-<>-<>

Skin

Dry flakes,
salt crust,
pain.

<>-<>-<>

Friends

Shark

Stingray

Eel

Tang

Damsel

Angel

You

<>-<>-<>

Performers

What’s her deal?

Where’s she from?

How’d she do it?

Five more minutes?

God, they love her.

She’s annoying.

She’s so quiet.

She seems angry.

What’s he pay her?

How old is she?

That’s illegal.

Think she’s with him?

How’d she hold it?

I don’t get it.

Is she cheating?

She can’t do that.

What’s she wearing?

Can she hear us?

…Nah, I doubt it.

<>-<>-<>

Time

Between your shifts you swim the pool
behind your house, where salty sweat
from swimming children suits your own,
and you can bathe in sun that strips
your skin like mesh along a frame…
But you don’t care. You’re beached, you’re waved,
you’re home—or more than in the dark
apartment, in your bedroom, in your bed
where loneliness will drag you to the grave.

<>-<>-<>

Face

Eyes.
Brown eyes.
A gaze that sees
the way that no one ever does.

She holds a pad of paper, single pen
against the glass
as if to say,
I may?

The eyes
become a body,
sitting still and straight
upon the bench where children long have stuck
their paws and mothers rested wearily and fathers
watched you, where they’ve turned you
into something else, or what
you are.

Not her.
This girl with two
black buns, brown skin, tan blazer,
t-shirt with a scientific drawing of a dandelion,

jeans so loose below and tight above the belly button,
leather belt, tall boots, the kind
you wear when you are
someone else.

She draws
you long, for many
breaths that rise you to the top
and back again to pose a favorite crescent.

There you grow, the way you see yourself:
all fish, all mermaid. Page so blue…
and you…
and you.

<>-<>-<>

Wait

The seaweed grows
/
The starlight shifts
/
The stingray dies
/
The hat man laughs
/
The money comes
/
She doesn’t.

<>-<>-<>

Return

She’s back without the pad—and with a book.
Old, faded, spine a mess, all cracked like when
the earth splits open, spewing forth its lava.

Expect great things from such a book, your father
said, and handed you your own, your first,
the book of names of those who’d come before,

the book that burned you, all those dead
now buried in their golden caskets,
tied to reefs so strong they’ll hold forever,

that infernal book. It cursed you to a life
you did not want. If you could rip the pages
maybe you’d be free. You wonder who

has held it since—which sister—but it doesn’t
really make a difference. It’s been printed
on you, on these scales, the tail, the top,

your heart, the way you hear the ocean
every time you close your eyes, the way
you’re drowning always in this tank,

just one missed breath,

just breathe,

Just breathe, she says,

and there she is upon the rock above you
and her book says Fairy Tales in golden font,
and oh, she knows, she knows, she knows

she knows.

<>-<>-<>

Waking

Waves lapping.

Slaps of fish tails on the surface.

Smells so sharp, so salted.

Behind your eyelids, you are home.

You fear the artificial light and what it brings—
or doesn’t.

She is gone.

<>-<>-<>

Time II

She won’t return—and would you, if you knew?

This is the curse you said you’d claim, the one that keeps

you legged and tailed, weighed down by water and the words

you cannot say—or will not, for what good are they

when you have seen the lighted towns go down in earth made

lined by those you love, their songs the dooms of men,

their deaths the glory of the maid, all set in marble

by the throne, so known forever: martyr, mermaid, mine.

<>-<>-<>

Disguise

You leave the lockers plain: black hat pulled down
over slicked hair; white t-shirt; leggings for
the gym—not that you go, when you have swam
so long you’ll eat for hours—and the shoes,
Adidas sneakers found for cheap, their scent
donated from the ones who wore them first.
How you have cursed the line of beauties…

cursed them plain,
cursed them used,

cursed them doomed to aisles of faded sweaters,
pilled, their threads like bits of cloth from men
who long ago were drowned, the sound of kids
in toy aisles sending trucks under their legs,
a friend asking another, Is this cool?,
and you, who once knew gold and jewel
now handing stacks of dollar bills until

your wallet empties.

<>-<>-<>

Surprise

Hi, she says. She’s by the door before your shift.
Those same black boots and khaki pants with pockets
full of pencils poking holes and notebooks with
the coiled spines like lines of birds’ wings in a soar
above the seam, a dream in cropped-top shirt
that says to hug a tree. Your hands go to your hair
and wring the water to a dribble. Hey, you say.

<>-<>-<>

Name

Sela.
…Sela?
Sela…
Sela.

<>-<>-<>

Walk

She walks with purpose, every foot
an introduction to the new,
like someone flinging back the door—
the promise of adventure.

You walk with fear, every foot
a fall in motion, long and wild,
like someone on a deck in waves—
nature’s laws abandoned.

<>-<>-<>

Home

A part of town you do not know.
Brownstones.
Front stoops.
Tall trees.
Beauty.

<>-<>-<>

Room

A collector of the strange.

A butterfly inside a golden frame,

the named birds stuffed and perched,

dried flowers,

gems,

a red cicada,

fallen leaves preserved by wax,

a vertebrae.

You wonder where you’ll go…

and if she’ll keep you.

<>-<>-<>

Books

Encyclopedias
of birds and fish,
the stars and planets,
insects, ancient Egypt;
books of war, of men in coats
with swords;
novels, old with cracking spines,
and new, the smell
of chemicals and ink;
languages, their lists
of words en frainçais,
español.
Has she read these tomes—
these tombs
of what’s been lost…
…and what you’ve taken?

<>-<>-<>

Music

Before you understand the needle moving
to the vinyl disc the singing starts,
a heart song, something low and loud
that tells the story of a left-and-lost,
and there you are—but you are not.

You see the backs of five young sisters,
five linked arms, hear singing to the moon
and that great ship face, storm above,
the sweet-note promises of life beneath,

the tilt, the tilt, the crash of bodies
in the water, in the reef, the very
filling of your gills, you breathe them in,
you push them out, you carry them
inside you.

Take me to the water!

What?

The water! Quickly!

She fills up the tub, the sound of rush,
the smell of lavender, the way she guides you
in your clothes, warm warm up to your cheeks
and then your nose, your body drowning
so it doesn’t break.

The volume of the water takes the surge
you push away, that would have brought
the house down, for you might have legs
and breathe this air but you will never be more
than a weapon made to save the ones you’ve left—

and kill the ones you crave.

<>-<>-<>

Scars

Well, now you’ll grow, she said, a regal queen
who could not take the throne but ruled it well
through those she loved: a son, a Sea King; subjects;
sisters six, who took oysters upon their tails
so that the shells bit blood. They hurt me so,
you said, your tail so red, so noble.
Pride must suffer pain, she said, as though you
claimed the crown and not your garden red
with blooms, as though you doomed the men who you
were bred to bring down deep. And you still keep
those bites along your legs, those little scars,
those great eight mouths that tried to anchor you
with pearl and wreath until you grew your legs
and left those filter feeders pumping air
in eight great graves upon a silent beach.

<>-<>-<>

Towel

Thick.
Warm.
Heavy—
like the ocean.
How you’ve missed its weight.

<>-<>-<>

Tea

So you’re a bomb? she says,
matter of fact, like mint or gray,
and you say, Not exactly.

Then what?, she says, I saw
the way the water moved. I saw you
hold it in… But if you hadn’t…

But I did. You sip your tea,
the pale brown-green that tastes like smells—
mint toothpaste, citrus heat—

and let the roof-burn keep
you silent as you think of how to say
that even now you feel

the slabs of rock, the softer
mantle layer moving like your hands
in water, gliding gliding,

and the way that you reach down
and push, so that the echoes of the earth
might sing, or calm them

with your palms, so strong
they fight the very nature of your own
who use this power

only to destroy.

<>-<>-<>

Then again…

Have you ever seen a
picture of a mermaid?

A real one? A caught one?

Have you seen the blood run
blue, thin as water, down
the grid of woven mesh,
each knot a drip on thread,
a raining in the sea
beneath which brothers cry
and sisters stretch their hands
to catch the blue of us?

There is no picture—none
that we’ll allow to leave.

Have you seen a cyclone?

Inward spiral, coiled
snake, sending to the sky
a stake between the realms?

You see, they got it wrong.
We do not lose our voice
out of the water, but
in singing, lose ourselves
so that the rest might live.

<>-<>-<>

Hat

Leather tricorne, feathered on one side:
the smell of sea, a lick of salt upon
the air and on your tongue; the ring of sweat
inside, a man’s, a woman’s; many lines
that end upon the crown; the hair, gray-brown,
that lives there like a ghost.

Whose hat? you say, but you already know.

<>-<>-<>

Name II

Sela.
…Empress of the sea?
Leader of her pirates…
and sister.

<>-<>-<>

Picture

A family posed along a boat, their arms
around the rest, their smiles wide, their hats
like birds that sit upon the water bobbed

by gentle waves caught sprayed against the hull
in one long moment on the page. The frame
is gold and older than you both, from long
ago and not returned…

…your father’s frame.

<>-<>-<>

Rooms

You see them now for what they are:
bare beds, locked drawers, the walls like beaches
newly washed by waves. You see their pain,
like chambers of a heart that does not beat.
There is no song here, only death, for those
who’ve gone…and those who soon will go.

<>-<>-<>

Apology

She says she’s not a pirate. Gave it up,
she says, the day I watched another ship
go down, a cannonball inside its heart,
all animal in roar and crack and doom
and us just watching… watching as they died.
Then setting sail with treasure on our deck,
adventure in our hearts, knowing only
map, and X, and golden coins, and bellies
that will never fill. I gave it up that
day but couldn’t leave for years, not till my
parents drowned, and brother too, or so I
thought until I knew the truth. He’s down there
captive, turned to tail, and I won’t rest, not
till he’s back on land.

<>-<>-<>

Letter

Dear Sela, I am writing from the place
we only heard in dreams, sweet songs of life
beneath the waves, from which we plugged our ears
so that we would not drown. Yet here I swim,
with all we’ve thought and more. They treat me well
for what I am—a captive—and they teach
me how to fish, to sing, to watch for ships
like ours that now might catch me in a net.
If letters reach you, bottled hope sent out
along the waves, do not forget me, nor
adventure out to look, for I am tailed
and trapped.

As always, sister, love from me,
Your Koller

<>-<>-<>

Plan

You would get him?

Yes, I would.

Though he has told you—?

He knows not the ways I’d use.

So you already know her, then?

I’ve heard of her. I’d hoped…

I do know where to find her.

…Sorry that I lied.

I’d do the same.

You would? So you will help me, then?

…Beneath the waves, what will you do?

Extract in sleep, and bring him home.

With no one harmed?

I hope not.

I cannot go down. I’d drown.

But you could tell me where to dive.
If he’s alive…

Alright, I’ll help, and she will, too, for minutes of your life.

You gave her yours?

I did, and so much more.

<>-<>-<>

Hand

Thumb, with the nail painted blue
from her ink, pooled in the cracks
and the folds at the joint…

Pointer, linked at your palm,
so it brushes the skin
when she moves for the wheel…

Middle, almost as long
as your hand, like the peek
of a crested wave…

Ring, with the circle of gold
from a mother who lives
in the treasures she left…

Pinkie, pulled back,
like the anchor she cannot
quite lower to ground.

<>-<>-<>

Turf-Moor

Its name in neon: Turf-Moor.

Lights from tinted windows;
beams of white like sweeping beacons;
line around the wall;

smell of musk, of mist,
of alcohol and citrus fruit;
music like the pounding waves.

You know it well in other form,
in whirlpool foam, in twirling bog,

its name in sea-grass: Turf-Moor.

<>-<>-<>

Polypi

/ a hundred-headed serpent / reaching hands
like branches / finger worms around your waist /
so strong, so that they’ll leave a printed bruise
at every tip / they seize and fasten / help
she says / you pry the bones / the terror wood
of mermaid fear / the dead / the hair that gives
too much to grasp / she says / you cannot free
the iron bands / the babies / humans too,
all drowned and drowned / land animals all seized /
all strangled / help / the polypi / the song /
the dancing bodies / help / the sway of hips /
/ the hundred-headed knowledge / tell her that
the only serpent here /

/ is /

/you /

<>-<>-<>

Sea Witch

You came, she says,
but for what purpose I cannot
suppose. You want your tail?

I don’t.

You want—

You know for what we’ve come, says Sela. Give
the potion quick and let us leave this place.

Your face—?

What care have you?

No care at all…

You seem—

I said no care. The fall of men
and mermaid both concerns me
little.

Little is not all—

Be gone.

She waves her hand so that a server brings
a vial filled with pink and tinged with blood.

You wonder whose, and if to care
much less would strip your soul to bone.

As Sela leaves the room, you whisper low:

You wear them well.

I know.

I don’t regret my choice.

Oh, is that so?

It is—

Well you should know that vial
kills the one who gills it—kills
the one who gave you life.

You lie.

A father may not earn your love,
but he will give his trident
for her brother all the same
and end his name, and yours—
my lying little mermaid.

<>-<>-<>

Mer-King

He wears the crown his father forged so long
before your birth, before his death in net,
for even kings may fall. He wears the lines
of age, two hundred years, and fifty more
before the end, when tattooed chest will breathe
its last. He wears the golden bands on arms
that strain the lines of metal, bands that tell
the stories of his time. He wears the tail
of silver-blue with scales each rimmed in gold,
a process known to be so painful that
the ruler must be wakened from close sleep.
He wears the trident, magic mystery
that brings your people longer life and keeps
them hidden, only wielded by the ones
who wear the Mer-King’s name: six sisters, no,
just five. He wears the weight of what you’ve done—
what they did, too. And who will wear it when
he’s gone?

<>-<>-<>

Drive

She keeps her eyes ahead. The potion glows
between your seats, a single burning star
that guides the way to guilt. You close your eyes.

<>-<>-<>

Ship

The wooden warship floating at the dock
is like the past incarnate, past in patch,
like every ship you’ve ever drowned dredged up
and sewn into this quilt of mermaid doom,
the sails are ghosts, the masts are bones of men
stood up in grounds of war, the hallowed deck
is lid above the casket hull, and stores of guns
are promises of what has come before.

<>-<>-<>

Crew

Blank faces of those who have spent their lives
at sea, hearing only the spray of salt
at their side, wanting only a tailwind.
If they learn who you are, they will hate you.

<>-<>-<>

Night

Sky like a pool.
Body afloat.
Stars in your eyes.

/

Wind cool and sharp.
Air in your lungs.
Her by your side.

<>-<>-<>

Ties

Awakened by a tightness in your wrists,
like fingers gripping blood from vein, you stretch
but find your arms constricted by a rope.

On opening your eyes: the sea, the smell
of salt, the dampness on your tongue, as if
you breathe it, and the crew, with armament

around you like a human cage, their swords
all raised, the sea behind them like a troop.
“I know she told you,” Sela says. “So stay.”

<>-<>-<>

Secret

Beneath the canvas covers, submarines,
with eyes like squirrel fish hunting in the night
and fishy faces carved in steel, the wheels
of copper on their head that spin and lift
so men might take the helms, the bodies shark
and cog, the tails propeller pinwheels held
in wait by bellies not yet filled with steam,
and on the sides two spears in potion pink.

A fleet.

A school.

<>-<>-<>

Deck

Abandoned by your captors, you must wait
while metal faces blur into the sea,
the lights all waved and small, no beams as clues
for those who might be saved.

A single guard stands post ten feet away,
her eyes cast down in waves she cannot know
and will not try to understand. You see
the evilness of man.

The deck is faded, old, and lined, the wood
a face of time turned back, the past alive
in those long bars, in you, in Sela, who
revives an aged feud.

In looking down, you almost miss the splash
of body into sea, the seagull cry
surprised by flight, and then the bottle rolled
across the boards to you.

<>-<>-<>

Bottle

Green
glass
empty

message
not
left

break
shatter
cut

free.

<>-<>-<>

Hidden Message

You cannot swim. You thought she’d send you tail
or weapon, message, something useful you
might use… But then again, the bottle shards
cannot be made again into a glass—

Or rather, can, if crushed, revolved, a heat
applied to strip, then sorted green and brown
and clear, then hammered, binned to cullet, made
again to bottles… insulation… you…

And now you see the pieces puzzled tight.
The way that you might break and then become.
The truth was never in the bomb, but song—
the notes as varied as the one who sing them.

You raise your hand and start with C, so low
that even you could not distinguish voice
from wave—so low it echoes in your heart
and not your head. There. Yes. The shards of you

remade, and now in music, broken down
to dust. Your arms bring forth the storm, the cloud
of deck and water, skin and scale, death and
life—

two legs

one tail

—and Little is not all.

<>-<>-<>

Submarines

They are deep. You swim as fast as tail might
take, and still, propellers taunt you lower.
Ghost flash of a fleet. Echo of the sound
of water whirled and bubbled. You cannot
catch them, so you stop and send your voice.

<>-<>-<>

War

Rush

Harpoon

Blood

Blue

Rush

Harpoon

Blood

Blue

Rush

Harpoon

Blood

Blue

Trident

Flash

Red

<>-<>-<>

Standoff

Two bulb eyes. Two blue eyes.
Your father at the face
of Sela’s submarine.

I’ve come for him,
she says over a mic,
And I won’t leave until—

Oh sister, no, says one
you do not know as man.
He lets go of the hand

he’d held in almost death
and swims his tail to shield
the rest, and one he loves.

I chose to stay. For him.
I meant… It’s hard to say.
She asks, You’re one of them?

And now you see the witch
in him—in all of you.

<>-<>-<>

Mother

You understand at last why you have not
belonged in water, nor on land. Not here
with sisters only half like you and half
the demons she has made in loneliness.
Why when the music sings you don’t explode.
Why when she gave you legs she asked for just
a promise that you not return. Why she
came too, came back, for she is land witch first,
escaped, the one who staked the ocean home
when hers was taken, one your father wished
and made his own, a wave that he might hold
as mortal only long enough for her to miss.

<>-<>-<>

Future

When Sela leaves, you go. You do not know
what time will heal, or whether you’ll return
again to that forgotten kingdom, but
for now you know you cannot stay. The deaths
will end, for no witch needs their drowning mold
to make her clay, and some may walk away
or swim again out past the ships to where
the deepest blue goes black and then to gold,
and you will do the work the witch has left
when you are needed—when they call you out
to water, or to sandy sea, to reel
them legs or cast them tails—or maybe she’ll return
to that abandoned Turf-Moor, light the sign,
call in the line and take her spot behind
the bars that cannot hold a wave. For now,
you buy the building, fill the pools, and then,
when doors have closed, drift out to brownstone streets.
For now, you swim…

You float…

You wave.

<>-<>-<>

Daughter of Foam

by kelly ann jacobson