Lagoona Blue
Look, my ears are gills now,
and my skin is the color of ocean.
sometimes I wake with bangles,
my hands tied with what once tied beer cans.
When I was a child I’d blow out my breath
and let my body sink, watch my hair float
above me and pretend to be a drowning woman.
That’s how it is most days—the quiet, the plastic.
I lick my skin. I drink the salt.
Sometimes mercury rains down from the fillings
of the newly cremated dead. It makes my hair shine,
my eyes bright, my brain ring with a beautiful forgetting.
and my skin is the color of ocean.
sometimes I wake with bangles,
my hands tied with what once tied beer cans.
When I was a child I’d blow out my breath
and let my body sink, watch my hair float
above me and pretend to be a drowning woman.
That’s how it is most days—the quiet, the plastic.
I lick my skin. I drink the salt.
Sometimes mercury rains down from the fillings
of the newly cremated dead. It makes my hair shine,
my eyes bright, my brain ring with a beautiful forgetting.
1.Since you published with Crab Creek Review, how has your work grown or changed? What excites you now that maybe didn’t back then?
Crab Creek review published two Monster High poems shortly after I wrote them, which was a huge confidence boost. Back then they were still just in monologue form. I was talking with Jennifer Bullis and Dana Patterson about Dayna’s use of embroidery in poetry and Bruce Beasley’s images of dice in poems. This sparked of the idea for adding cold case cards to The Monster High Files, modeled on the Snohomish County cold case cards. I received a Sundress residency August of 2020 to work on this project, which gave me the time I needed to pull it together. I wrote more poems and reorganized the poems and cards as the suit of hearts of a card deck as well as the doll voices as a chapbook. So far, I've published all but one of these poems in journals. They can be read in Gingerbread House, Freeze Ray, Vagabond City, and Pink Plastic House. The manuscript has been touring the chapbook circuit and was a finalist for the Two Sylvia's chapbook prize in 2020. The most recent development was after seeing Kristin Garth's Barbie photos in Pink Plastic House I started adding photos of Monster High dolls. One hope I have for the future is to somehow have The Monster High Files preformed as a theatrical performance.
2. Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you’ve written over the years? Is there any advice you would give to writers submitting their work?
For a long time the piece of writing advice that I held close was from Anne Sexton's letters. She writes "As for madness.... hell! Most poets are mad. It doesn’t qualify us for anything. Madness is a waste of time.... nothing grows from it and you, meanwhile, only grow into it like a snail."
Today is my birthday (I'm a Scorpio). I think my advice would be that poetry is a losing game. Really, there’s no money in it, no success. But knowing that gives me freedom. Since writing poetry is not feeding my children, I just get to take what I like. I love the community, sending and receiving handwritten letters and poems typed on a typewriter, going for a walk in the cemetery and coming back with a poem in my brain, seeing an idea through to a project. I hate social media, jealousy, and drama, so I avoid it. I do have an Instagram account, @goddessofdrought but I keep it pretty minimal.
3. What are you reading?
I'm reading Love letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira. It's a YA novel and it's so good! I bought it about a week ago and I can't wait to finish it. It tells the story of a high school sophomore’s year after her sister dies and is written in the form of letters to dead people like Kurt Cobain, Elizabeth Bishop, and River Phoenix.
4. What are you working on?
I'd like to see The Monster High Files through to publication, or a dramatic performance. I don't have a new project going.
Crab Creek review published two Monster High poems shortly after I wrote them, which was a huge confidence boost. Back then they were still just in monologue form. I was talking with Jennifer Bullis and Dana Patterson about Dayna’s use of embroidery in poetry and Bruce Beasley’s images of dice in poems. This sparked of the idea for adding cold case cards to The Monster High Files, modeled on the Snohomish County cold case cards. I received a Sundress residency August of 2020 to work on this project, which gave me the time I needed to pull it together. I wrote more poems and reorganized the poems and cards as the suit of hearts of a card deck as well as the doll voices as a chapbook. So far, I've published all but one of these poems in journals. They can be read in Gingerbread House, Freeze Ray, Vagabond City, and Pink Plastic House. The manuscript has been touring the chapbook circuit and was a finalist for the Two Sylvia's chapbook prize in 2020. The most recent development was after seeing Kristin Garth's Barbie photos in Pink Plastic House I started adding photos of Monster High dolls. One hope I have for the future is to somehow have The Monster High Files preformed as a theatrical performance.
2. Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you’ve written over the years? Is there any advice you would give to writers submitting their work?
For a long time the piece of writing advice that I held close was from Anne Sexton's letters. She writes "As for madness.... hell! Most poets are mad. It doesn’t qualify us for anything. Madness is a waste of time.... nothing grows from it and you, meanwhile, only grow into it like a snail."
Today is my birthday (I'm a Scorpio). I think my advice would be that poetry is a losing game. Really, there’s no money in it, no success. But knowing that gives me freedom. Since writing poetry is not feeding my children, I just get to take what I like. I love the community, sending and receiving handwritten letters and poems typed on a typewriter, going for a walk in the cemetery and coming back with a poem in my brain, seeing an idea through to a project. I hate social media, jealousy, and drama, so I avoid it. I do have an Instagram account, @goddessofdrought but I keep it pretty minimal.
3. What are you reading?
I'm reading Love letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira. It's a YA novel and it's so good! I bought it about a week ago and I can't wait to finish it. It tells the story of a high school sophomore’s year after her sister dies and is written in the form of letters to dead people like Kurt Cobain, Elizabeth Bishop, and River Phoenix.
4. What are you working on?
I'd like to see The Monster High Files through to publication, or a dramatic performance. I don't have a new project going.
Rachel Mehl lives in Bellingham, WA. She has an MFA from University of Oregon and teaches at Bellingham Technical College. She is the Chair or the Sue C. Boynton Poetry Contest and an editor for Floating Bridge Press. Every year on her birthday she drags her family to the cemetery to get her photo taken with her children among the graves.