Thinking about “The Little Mermaid” in the Waiting Room of the Otolaryngology Department
(after Ros Seamark)
Let me be clear: no sea witch would want me like this. My larynx barnacled & slick with desire. She’d look me over; flex her tentacles. I’ve suckled enough brine to know how this ends. Wishes are for girls with bodies pure enough to sacrifice. Painless. Elegant. Reliable as currency. Would that I were so unsunk. Somewhere, another girl is wed to my longing. I’m still choking back seafoam when the nurse calls my name.
Copyright © 2024 by Arianna Monet. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 25, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This is part of an ongoing project wherein I use fairy tales as a lens through which to engage themes of Blackness, queerness, and disability—particularly as they relate to desire, desirability, and axes of power. I wrote this poem while in treatment for muscle tension dysphonia, a vocal disorder that significantly hindered my ability to speak. The poem adopts a form created by the poet Ros Seamark, a prose poem composed of exactly seventy-five words; here, the forced constraint of the poetic form mirrors the externally imposed speech restrictions present both in ‘The Little Mermaid’ and in my own life.”
—Arianna Monet
Arianna Monet
Arianna Monet is a queer Black poet from eastern Massachusetts. They are a 2023 Lambda Literary Fellow.