Mermaids of the Sacred Heart

by Bruce Meyer

They would loll upon the dumpster
behind Wong’s Chinese Restaurant
as the light went down on Saturdays,

imagining Sister as the sundown
and the night behind it the young priest
with dusky deep-set eyes.

Smoking and mouthing haloes,
they would sing about illicit love,
what it meant and how it sounded

in seabed songs the radio played.
Sin is never about the act itself
but the timing of the deed. Sex without

marriage was wrong yet tempting,
though marriage without love
followed like a wooly stranger

who begged them to touch him softly
with their youth. Everything
goes wrong as Time permits but they,

in the first verse of their lives, blossoms
of the Rose of Sharon and so belovèd,
blew clouds on which they floated

to wherever life would carry them,
opening their compacts and gazing hard
at lips that kissed the backs of hands.

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Bruce Meyer is author of sixty-four books of poetry, short stories, flash fiction, and non-fiction and has eight more books forthcoming in the next three years. His most recent collection of poetry is McLuhan's Canary (Guernica Editions, 2019). He lives in Barrie, Ontario, and teaches at Georgian College.