Oni Buchanan

PROSTHETIC MERMAID TAILS

•  
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• Prosthetic mermaid tails | for humans are now
  •  
  • in the queue of consideration | to be declared illegal.
• In some more forward­looking | countries with more
  •  
  • evolved, efficient | judicial systems, indeed
• mermaid tails have already | been declared illegal.
  •  
  • Because the problem is that | when wearing a mermaid tail,
• it turns out that humans | become fooled by the temporary
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  • physicality, by the merging | of the legs into a fin—even a
• prosthetic fin!—to think | that they could stay underwater
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  • longer than is actually | humanly possible. Given human
• limitations of breathing. | See, the reality
  •  
  • is that people were drowning. | Real people were actually drowning!
• Human men and women | who wore mermaid tails
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  • found their brains in such a | state of ecstasy—flipping
• underwater, gliding, speeding, | diving deep—and they stayed
  •  
  • too long, they engaged the | illusion 20­35 seconds too long
• was really all it took. | (Approximately.) Just the
  •  
  • slightest misdemeanor. | Just the slightest self­indulgence.
• Just the sheer wonder, luxuriating | at the joy they felt, at the sudden
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  • intoxicating quantity of | bliss and freedom! At the
• possibilities opening up, | unfolding before them almost
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  • infinitely after so much | deprivation! After so much
• gravity and groundedness! | And honestly, it blotted out
  •  
  • their better judgment. | And they drowned
• from lingering too long | in their fleeting fantasy, their
  •  
  • self­delusion which had | meanwhile brought them deep
• into an uninhabitable | ecosystem. You can see
  •  
  • how this phenomenon | is problematic. Because
• to put it bluntly, human | possibility ends before
  •  
  • mermaid possibility, when it | comes to swimming underwater.
• It’s just a pure and simple | fact. Everyone knows that
  •  
  • rationally. And from isolated | tragedy, as sometimes happens,
• a larger pattern began | to form when tracked upon a
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  • map, when tracked in analyzed | causality: drownings of euphoria,
• drownings of delirious | diving, drownings with the widest
  •  
  • smiles and the cheeks stretched | underwater with the speed,
• then suddenly the limits | of the breath’s elasticity are
  •  
  • reached, the surface frames | a tantalizing gateway,
• the sun shines high | above the shimmering boundary—

ONI BUCHANAN is a poet, pianist, and the founder and director of the Ariel Artists classical music management company. Buchanan is the author of three books of poetry: Must a Violence, Spring, and What Animal. Her poems have been selected for numerous anthologies, and have been published in many print and online literary journals.