Lagoona Blue
from the Monster High files
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. I lick my skin. I drink the salt.
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.
Sometimes mercury rains down from the fillings
of the cremated dead. It makes my hair shine,
my eyes bright and toxic,
my brain ring with a beautiful forgetting.
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. I lick my skin. I drink the salt.
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.
Sometimes mercury rains down from the fillings
of the cremated dead. It makes my hair shine,
my eyes bright and toxic,
my brain ring with a beautiful forgetting.
Rachel Mehl lives in Bellingham, Washington. She has an MFA from University of Oregon. Her work has most recently appeared in Pontoon and Twyckenham Notes.
These two poems [featured in Crab Creek Review] are from a series of poems, in progress, called “The Monster High Files.” They are in the voices of Monster High dolls, mostly from beyond the grave.
These two poems [featured in Crab Creek Review] are from a series of poems, in progress, called “The Monster High Files.” They are in the voices of Monster High dolls, mostly from beyond the grave.