“Manatees” by Elizabeth Gold

Maybe those sailors who mistook them for mermaids

liked their women with a little meat on them,

gray green skin patchy with algae.

Maybe they liked them almost hairless

except for a few spiky whiskers

on a homely-cute tush-shaped face.

Or maybe they were just men

who had been away from home a really long time.

Maybe they had almost forgotten

what it was like to cup a woman’s breasts

or smell the oil of her on their fingers.

Or maybe they had never known. Some of them

were so young. Twelve. Thirteen. Cabin boys.

I think of them in the dank hulks of their caravels,

sketching a woman in air, tweaking her-

hair, eyes, hips-to their liking.

Or pulling a tooth from the jaw of a whale,

scrubbing it clean and inking a sweetheart on it.

Or scanning the water for manatees.

Who hasn’t done a thing like that?

Invented a lover out of air or bone or water?

All those years on my own in New York­-

sometimes a blind date, couple of drinks

and desultory conversation with a stranger.

I remember walking into a room and seeing

whoever it was for the first time, hoping for-

I don’t know. That something kind would swim up

to the surface. That I could nudge him into a human shape.