The Law Concerning Mermaids
There was once a law concerning mermaids. My friend thinks it a wondrous thing – that the British Empire was so thorough it had invented a law for everything. And in this law it was decreed: were any to be found in their usual spots, showing off like dolphins, sunbathing on rocks – they would no longer belong to themselves. And maybe this is the problem with empires: how they have forced us to live in a world lacking in mermaids – mermaids who understood that they simply were, and did not need permission to exist or to be beautiful. The law concerning mermaids only caused mermaids to pass a law concerning man: that they would never again cross our boundaries of sand; never again lift their torsos up from the surf; never again wave at sailors, salt dripping from their curls; would never again enter our dry and stifling world.
The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion
an extract
- in which the cartographer explains himself
You might say
my job is not
to lose myself exactly
but to imagine
what loss might feel like –
the sudden creeping pace,
the consultation with trees and blue
fences and whatever else
might prove a landmark.
My job is to imagine the widening
of the unfamiliar and also
the widening ache of it;
to anticipate the ironic
question: how did we find
ourselves here? My job is
to untangle the tangled,
to unworry the concerned,
to guide you out from cul-de-sacs
into which you may have wrongly turned.
ii. in which the rastaman disagrees
The rastaman has another reasoning.
He says – now that man’s job is never straight-
forward or easy. Him work is to make thin and crushable
all that is big and as real as ourselves; is to make flat
all that is high and rolling; is to make invisible and wutliss
plenty things that poor people cyaa do without – like board
houses, and the corner shop from which Miss Katie sell
her famous peanut porridge. And then again
the mapmaker’s work is to make visible
all them things that shoulda never exist in the first place
like the conquest of pirates, like borders,
like the viral spread of governments
iii.
The cartographer says
no –
What I do is science. I show
the earth as it is, without bias.
I never fall in love. I never get involved
with the muddy affairs of land.
Too much passion unsteadies the hand.
I aim to show the full
of a place in just a glance.
iv.
The rastaman thinks, draw me a map of what you see
then I will draw a map of what you never see
and guess me whose map will be bigger than whose?
Guess me whose map will tell the larger truth?
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Most of the inspiration for the monthly poetry section in the magazine is a brilliant collection that we wholeheartedly recommend: 100 Queer Poems, an anthology by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan. The Guardian awarded the anthology as the Best Poetry Book in 2023. The selection is done by our colleague with a PhD in poetry, Raz Ion.
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GAY45 is committed to publishing a diversity of journalism, prose, and poetry. We’d like to hear your thoughts about this or any of our articles. And here’s our email if you want to send a letter: [email protected].
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When we learn of a mistake, we acknowledge it with a correction. If you spot an error, please let us know.
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Listen to our podcast ‘Gen Clash: Queer Perspectives on Current Affairs’ on your favourite podcast platform.
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