MIA GOLDEN
golden shovel for a rooftop siren
– after jaiden thompson
i meet you again at a garden party, hair kissed by wind, intestines tangled
from a waltz with alcohol + a tango with your eyes, + i finally speak with
you + you say you are a fish, not like a star-strewn pisces,
but a siren. you tell me you smash sailors’ skulls.
i can’t tell if you are joking, + smile + smile + laugh like
a television searching for a signal, brain fizzing in champagne, like static.
i look at your lips. i think, if i flung a tv set into the ocean, we could electrocute the gods.
i displace oil; i think that makes me alive. do you splash water like archimedes’s crown? do you
transpose more sonatas than gold? do you remember my name? do you rust when you bathe?
i realize, starkly, that i’m staring. falling in love too quickly, diluted in
the reflection of your body as you swaps skin for scales, leaving me primal + bloody,
raw as i burn endlessly like greek fire, boiling as you take my hand. marrow
seizes, + i reassure my chest that this rendezvous is not a pathogen, +
your gills breathe against my hip, welding to the bone.
it is quiet here; it is my sixteenth november. our whispered words are the only witness upon
the terrace. our breath makes fog, + we cloud gaze. you summit my mouth + i submit to your bone
+ poseidon feels the shock of the increase in voltage, flat screen upon
sea floor, home in your sun-spots, home in your curves. may i write you a love song from bone?
mia golden (she/her) is a teen poet from california with work published or forthcoming in perhappened mag, eunoia review, all guts no glory, and more. she edits for indigo lit and the interstellar review. mia enjoys thrift stores and donuts, and often uses more words than necessary when saying simple phrases. she hopes you have a wonderful day!