I wake up with a fish tail.
It’s not green, like in a painting,
but iridescent, multicolored.
My fins spark light like laser beams,
on either side of me.
I’m a fine specimen.
I jump in the river
and propel my body
in undulating movements
through the current,
my spark-tail turbo-charging
like a jet into New York Harbor.
Then head south into the Atlantic,
moving a hundred knots
an hour, singing a sea shanty.
Fish fly out of my way,
some soaring above the waves,
others plunging deep.
Coxswains videotape me.
Nobody has ever seen
the likes of me
and my amazing mer-tail.
Geer Austin is the author of Cloverleaf (Poets Wear Prada Press). His poetry appears in Poet Lore, Manhattanville Review, Big Bridge, Plenitude, Boog City, and other journals, and in Lovejets: queer male poets on 200 years of Walt Whitman, and other anthologies. He lives in New York City.
