In air, amid the human voices. In the net.
And most of my sisters do not wake up,
but a few do,
and to these the sailors say,
Sing
in thick voices, thick fingers.
Sea girls, they say.
Wreathe us.

Forced song.

But because I am
different than my sisters
because there is, in me,
both more and less of the sea:
a pair of claws,
scuttling silently.
I can breathe their air
and they do not notice me
(forced song! forced song!)
and I can do,
as my sisters can’t,
what is now required.

Red and brown.
Heads on platters.

Wake up, sisters.
(because the song is over)
Wake.

But they don’t.

2.
What the land does to the sea,
again and again
what the land always does to the sea
and now I perceive,
sisters:
in burial chambers
weep and fast
black and white,
I comb their hair:
wake up, sisters!
But still
(forced song!)
they do not,
weep and pray
I squeeze it down:
a vision;
a universe
I bite and
roll it
it is inside me now and it does not flicker
and I know
that
there is only one way.

3.
a man on the beach

I am gentle,
one way to start more than a scene
small snap, no blood;
I need him:
a human skin.

Afterwards, what was his is mine:
face
coat
flesh
white flannel trousers

what he remembers

and in a pocket:
a soft round fruit, the color of my claws.

When I had claws.

It has, I think, remained there too long
(fuzzy memories).
It has gone, I perceive,
a little rotten,

because he failed to enjoy it
when he ought to have enjoyed it
(fuzzy memories).

But I?

First meal.

4.
Memories, retrograde. Hard to use.

But I learn quickly.

My name is…
I say it inverted; I say it thickly.
I am...

P. J. A.

And I begin to walk, no claws.

Backwards.

5.
To his home.
My home.

Inside,
ravenous,
I feed again:
toast and tea,
cakes and ices,
marmalade,
and—still ravenous—
cups and coffee spoons
porcelain....

Is there no more?

Alfred!
says a woman with bracelets,
a shawl
(I remember);
eyes that fix me
but have no phrase to say.

Yrgnuh, I say, among the crumbs, the shards, the spittle.

Still wrong.

I am going out, I say.

And I ascend the stair.

6.
Sunset.

At dusk, through narrow streets
through dooryards,
with the map in my mind,
to an ancient place,
water lapping,
and I pry away the stones:

a magic lantern.

7.
one way to start more than a scene
thirty-five hundred scenes
a million scenes and seven

and ensure that they keep swelling

8.
In Parliament,
they take my coat.

At the front,
they defer to me

(for the magic lantern burns
inside me now
and they dare not laugh).

I am Lord Hamlet, I say.
I am Lazarus.
I am John the Baptist.
I am Michelangelo.

serious, bright, and wise
but also negligent, rude, and rash

For what does it matter what I say?

Am I not more ambitious than any of the men I now claim to be?
More radical and revolutionary?

Am I not a greater prophet?

And the members of Parliament, transfixed by the light,
listen,
in this room, and no other,
this room, paneled in decorative screens,
while the lantern burns
and its smoke descends
into their eyes and mouths,
then
inside of them,
it forces out,
like butt ends
spit spit spit
their thinking parts,
so that,
as their voices rise,
then die,
their nerves,
at high velocity,
are thrown onto the screens.

Patternless.

9.
blood on my necktie,
nerves
sprinkled
on my collar
and morning coat

I amend myself before she sees—
the woman with the shawl.

But my alliance with the magic lantern
has altered this body in other ways, too:
stronger
younger
thicker.

Your arms and legs, she whispers.
Your hair.

So I must tell her something.

Dead, I say.

What?

A man on the beach, I say.
Everyone in Parliament.

I think that she will
turn,
be ill; or
cry into her pillow;
throw a novel and crack a window;

lean over the balcony
and hurl herself into the street.

But I have presumed.

10.
I thought so, she says.

And she shows me her claws.

11.
From the sea, she, too, had come
a decade ago,
trailing perfume, to disguise herself,
long skirts

and here, through years
of setback and crisis
(searching, in vain, for the magic lantern)
she, too, had been
plotting

to fundamentally recreate the Universe.

12.
And what, she asks, will we do now?

Something irreversible, I say.

Exactly, she says.

13.
Hands, days, works.

Costumed in the skins of the men of Parliament,
the magic lantern
summons the creatures of mist:

yellow smoke, yellow fog;

from window panes, drains, chimneys, terraces, and pools,
they advance;
from ships, commissioned by Parliamentary pens,
they assemble in a single harbor.

Until there is enough.

14.
Time, says the magic lantern.

At this decree,
our army rises:
the creatures of mist,

out of the harbor, into the city,
and with them they bring the sea.

One way.

She and I, in our two flesh costumes;
the lantern, dispersed in many.

So little time, we say—she and I,
and, as we amend the decree,
our soldiers,
blurs of yellow,
ascend still faster:
tongues, muzzles, backs,
while the water roars behind

into restaurants,
where late-night diners nibble and slurp,
as beer—then salt water—
slides along their throats

into hotels, where humans sleep
(but wake, screaming, when
the waves touch them).

Everyone is violently awake.

Like an operation, says the magic lantern.

Without ether, we say—she and I.

Sea beings—oysters—uneaten, with the life still inside them, rise above the sawdust.

Create.

Our intent is straightforward and every person, in every street,
pushing, wailing, drowning,
perfectly understands it.

Murder.

And my sisters’ names (and her sisters’ names)
and the names of all the sea girls that ever were, that
the land took and forced to sing;
names that we remember.

Names we tell them all!

One way: into water,
and the land—what land?—will never again brutalize the sea.

In the flooded streets, we relinquish our disguises.
Let this human flesh—like all human flesh—drown, too.

Before us is the first night,
soft October
and every minute, ever after:
every afternoon and every morning
belongs to us;

first this city,
then the earth.

Sisters!

Around us, with creatures of mist enough to submerge ten thousand worlds,
there are no more questions.

Only an overwhelming inevitability.

And we know, as we go together, claw to claw,
that this surgery—this rising water—will be eternal.

Let’s.