There is a man whose gods tell him to take the ocean as his consort. Carried in the womb of his lacquered palanquin, he arrives at his summer palace, laden with moonstone and pearl. His silk-spun robes of brocade lotus blossom drop upon the sand. He enters her.

And he waits. For many hours he waits.

I know this because I see his tender waterbird legs, his soft, hairy feet, pale and prune. The fool, how he treads, naked and flaccid, not knowing I am all around him, not knowing how close I come, and how I bare my claws. Oh, but how I resist swiping.

Instead, I sleep. I descend to my garden, and I sleep.

Into the dawn the man waits, and only his gods know what he expects to occur. Alone and shivering, he crawls ashore; he swears his attendants to secrecy.

DUYONG 5

DUYONG 5

I am the daughter of a woman gathering seaweed pods. Against her husband’s bidding, she wades too far into the bay, and a warm wave touches her belly. She wishes for it to caress her cheek. In a daydream, she closes her eyes, and the warm wave pulls at her shoulders. Slowly she submerges her swollen body, and this is how my mother’s womb becomes the sea.

DRAGONFLIES

DRAGONFLIES

Behind the laughing house, the path is a sudden steep slide to the riverbank, and there are no stones along the path. Young ladies don’t go to the river unchaperoned. Once, a young lady slid down the steep path and into the water. When she returned, her hair was a nest of mud and blue baby dragonflies. She tittered constantly, and touched her puckered lips with the tips of her wet fingers. She couldn’t speak otherwise, fevered and whirring as she was. She stroked her throat and flicked her hair. She pulled open her thin blouse, and exposed her tiny breasts to the village boys. The handsome man in the laughing house stepped outside his door to see the commotion. Old church mothers clucked, “She shouldn’t have been standing so close,” as young boys learned to kick the dirt and crow. The man shook his head at them all. He covered this young lady’s body with his white coat, placed a cold stethoscope against her burning skin, and found inside her heart the thrumming of the river.

There’s a mermaid in the river behind the laughing house. She’s the kind of mermaid who grabs at the ankles of young fishermen; the older ones’ legs are too sturdy. She pulls the youngsters into the cool water. She slides her body against theirs. They too, surface, crowned with blue baby dragonflies and the river rushing inside their hearts. The old mothers clutch their rosary beads.