Mermaids of Albuquerque

By Elizabeth Cohen

Issue 48 • Fall 2023 • Poetry

Imagine them sunbathing on Sandia Peak,
long locks rustling like Mexican feather grass.
And later, down in the bosque, flipping iridescent
tails skyward, diving into the acequia.

Once a month, they go to Tingley Beach to feed the geese,
bathe in moonlight, listen to the opera of animals
at the zoological park, serenading their abducted children
they know they’ll never see again.

The mermaids of Albuquerque understand.
Once they had a great sea, waves and particles
that rose and fell, tided and king tided, exhaling weeds
and shell onto ancient beaches, luring ancestors of birds.

Once they had currents, grottos, spin-cycling whirlpools.
They fanned themselves with lacy bryozoans.
Collected coin-size brachiopods like souvenirs.
Swam through whole apartment complexes of fish.  

The mermaids of Albuquerque visit Bone Spring cemetery,
a limestone catalog of the last mass extinction.
Bivalve clams and brachiopods stamp the headstones.
Sea urchin and nautiloid spirit the cliffs.

The mermaids of Albuquerque sing to their departed sea
dried now into a circuitry of salted slot canyons,
long-limbed black mesas, peppered with ash.
To an alkaline ledger of species, keeping track.

Now, truck stops inlet the basin. Diesel-hunting schools
of long haulers congregate, freighted with vegetables,
electronics, and human cargo, too. Beating hearts,
tied to one another, like baled hay.

The mermaids of Albuquerque sing to their captivity.
They’ve witnessed every genre of vanishing.  
They swim the asphalt interstate, passing miles
of pumpjacks, greedily milking the blood past.

The mermaids of Albuquerque sing to the ghosts of buffalo,
to hidden caverns of copper and bats. They know this
has nothing to do with them. Not the microchipped
desert, the fire-scorched hills, the anemic Rio Grande,

Pecos, Gila and Las Animas, waterways veined
with unstable isotopes and plastic shopping bags,
discarded tires, beer cars, and rock cliffs imprinted
with skeletons of extinct, cartilaginous fish. 

The mermaids of Albuquerque swim toward endzones,
singing to dreamers who survived borderlands; singing
to the river, rigged to catch refugees. They recognize it:
the world changes without sentiment, leaving pieces behind.

Look at what has survived the defection of those waters.
The dried seabed scuttles with scorpion, slithering snakes.
It’s not hard to imagine lobster and seasnake ancestors,
great underwater creatures, silently paddling the expanse.

Elizabeth Cohen

Elizabeth Cohen is a mama, dog mama, memoir coach, and writer who lives in Albuquerque, NM. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, is the author of the poetry books Bird Light and The Patron Saint of Cauliflower, and the chapbooks Wonder Electric and Martini Tattoo, among other works.