Page 19 - WTP Vol. V #5

We eased and we tweaked.
And we loaded our prize purses into plastic buckets, before risking our wellies in the receding sea,
to float our baby mermaids free.
‘We’ll pray for them,’ my little sister said,
her face all Church-learned piety.
Later, discovering how good deeds make you hungry, we galloped back to the café,
thinking thoughts of cake and coca-cola,
‘Or,’ my cousin said, her eyes wicked,
‘What about that?’
She pointed at a chalky scrawl on a blackboard:
“Rock salmon and chips”.
We shrugged and she, too eager to give us time to guess, said: ‘Rock salmon?
Also known as dogfish.’
My sister shook her head.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t eat a mermaid.’
Taylor’s poetry has been published in Synaesthesia and has been included in an anthology for the Silent Voices Project of found poetry of lost women. Her travel articles have been commended by BBC Wild- life in its travel writer of the year competition.
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