Thinking about “The Little Mermaid” in the Waiting Room of the Otolaryngology Department

^{(after Ros Seamark)}

Let me be clear: no sea witch would want me like this. My larynx barnacled & slick with desire. She’d look me over; flex her tentacles. I’ve suckled enough brine to know how this ends. Wishes are for girls with bodies pure enough to sacrifice. Painless. Elegant. Reliable as currency. Would that I were so unsunk. Somewhere, another girl is wed to my longing. I’m still choking back seafoam when the nurse calls my name.

Copyright © 2024 by Arianna Monet. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 25, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“This is part of an ongoing project wherein I use fairy tales as a lens through which to engage themes of Blackness, queerness, and disability—particularly as they relate to desire, desirability, and axes of power. I wrote this poem while in treatment for muscle tension dysphonia, a vocal disorder that significantly hindered my ability to speak. The poem adopts a form created by the poet Ros Seamark, a prose poem composed of exactly seventy-five words; here, the forced constraint of the poetic form mirrors the externally imposed speech restrictions present both in ‘The Little Mermaid’ and in my own life.”
—Arianna Monet