AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Down in the dark,
a skinny boy from Ukraine looks up
and his wet, silver neck pulses,
gills like mouths opening and closing. He gurgles:
Did we make it to Venus?
There were supposed to be collectives by now
on Mars and the moon. I would have
liked to see them.
Everyone
is an experiment, devotchka-amerikanka. To see
if a boy can breathe underwater
and talk to the fish.
If a girl can take all her beatings
and still smile for the camera.
It’s 1985 and I’ve never seen the sun.
Sometimes I cry, too.
By the nineties,
the boy under the sea
(Orin, Robert Loren Fleming 1989)
had wealth and a royal pedigree
a wizard for a father and a mother
with a crown of pearls.
I didn’t even recognize him
with his water-fist and his golden beard.
His wife
kept going insane
over and over
like she was stuck in a story
about someone else
and every time she tried to get out
