Mermaid Voices from A.M.Hayden inspired by Tori Amos (the Silent Earthquakes Series)

Mandy Hayden, M.A., RYT
Poet Laureate | Sinclair Community College
Professor | Religion, Philosophy, and Humanities
Course Coordinator | Religion and Humanities
Humanities, Government and Modern Languages Department
Pronouns: she, her, hers
https://windychickenpoet.com/

Mermaid Voices (A Tori Amos poem)
by A.M. Hayden

For an atheist, she was terrified of ghosts, preferred hiding under floppy hats 
as little girl snake charmer, picking up a hissing garter on the trail to give 
it a rub against her cheek, cooing, it wants me 
to be its mommy, interrupting her own story 
about reading Virginia Woolf, who waded into the river with rocks 
weighing down her pockets to drown the voices, to wash away life
they told her she was crazy in the same tone you give 
a woman a compliment, in admiration, in objectification, in transaction
she knew to look to a woman to take care of her, to look to me
to stop her from stumbling off cliff’s edge as she danced daises 
through her garnet hair, as she ignored locals’ warnings and glided 
her backstroke in the cloudy Rio Grande, she told me she wanted a mamba 
tattooed across her belly, but feared the pain
sweet sting of infusion in her tender blushed skin, pink as a suckling piglet
told me this as she swirled her one neon sandal from her fingertips,
orphaned by the other still crevice wedged somewhere during canyon climb
every guy she knew pointed her in the direction of her own destruction
accompanied her to the edge singing sweetly to steady, to give
illusion she could not stand on her own, clove cigarette smoke and mirrors
when she was 11 her mother locked her in the bedroom closet, she told me,
she screamed inside the slatted door as her mother recited scripture
nearly choking on her duty to drive the demons out, she remembered 
her mother’s jaw trembling when she spoke in tongues, my
mother would have been the one burning the witches, she said
she always liked toast and she swore she would burn out young too 
just to spite her, her aching arms wrapped around herself,
snuffed out before she could be stripped of her beauty
and this is why I only feel air when I reach for her, she was always ether
her words echoing against canyon walls, plunging deep into ocean’s abyss
still waiting for shrilled chorus of mermaid voices to summon her again




*give me life, give me pain, give me myself again from Little Earthquakes, 1992.