What if
The siren songs
Fishermen were meant to fear
Didn’t come from the sea?
What if the powerful howls
Came from the raw throats of
Women on land,
Women at home in their farmhouses
Gripping the edge of the kitchen sink,
Or curled up on the edge of the bed?
From women wandering the shoreline in shawls,
All of them keening,
Mourning
For the matted kelp long gone from
Their carefully shorn heads?
It has never been the mermaids
Who salted the ocean with their tears.
That flavor,
Little by little,
Washed downstream,
Out of the eyes of those who would have tails.
Author Bio:
Stacey Crawford Murphy lives with her family in Ithaca, NY. She has been playing with words her whole life and recently came into a poetry spurt, possibly out of the joy that short, complete thoughts can bring while life seems to contain so many longer, more complicated ones. In the past year several of her poems have appeared in online journals. When not writing, Stacey works as an independent grantwriting consultant. She enjoys raising a son with her husband, her friends, time in nature, and adventures big and small.
The siren songs
Fishermen were meant to fear
Didn’t come from the sea?
What if the powerful howls
Came from the raw throats of
Women on land,
Women at home in their farmhouses
Gripping the edge of the kitchen sink,
Or curled up on the edge of the bed?
From women wandering the shoreline in shawls,
All of them keening,
Mourning
For the matted kelp long gone from
Their carefully shorn heads?
It has never been the mermaids
Who salted the ocean with their tears.
That flavor,
Little by little,
Washed downstream,
Out of the eyes of those who would have tails.
Author Bio:
Stacey Crawford Murphy lives with her family in Ithaca, NY. She has been playing with words her whole life and recently came into a poetry spurt, possibly out of the joy that short, complete thoughts can bring while life seems to contain so many longer, more complicated ones. In the past year several of her poems have appeared in online journals. When not writing, Stacey works as an independent grantwriting consultant. She enjoys raising a son with her husband, her friends, time in nature, and adventures big and small.
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