The Other One

And if a human woman—say, the man’s sister

who lives in his house, cleans fish,

her hands gone knobbly from scouring pots, 

while the seal wife acts out shadow 

puppet stories for the boy and girl 

or walks for hours on the stone beach 

studying waves as if she could read

what’s etched there—what if this sister 

stumbles on the chest that hides the fur? 

One night, while man and selkie dream, 

his arm wound tight across his wife’s back, 

the sister untangles herself from the bed 

she shares with the kelp-scented children, 

breaks the lock and drags the spotted pelt 

across the shingle. In her hands, it sags

like fear, but on her frame it’s as snug as if

her breasts and thighs had grown to fit.

She dives nose-first to meet the January sea. 

Mile upon mile, she glows like a harpoon 

pulled from the forge and follows her hunger.

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Note: Selkies are creatures from Northern European folklore that can transform from seal to human and back. In some stories, a human man forces a selkie woman to marry him by stealing and hiding her seal skin. 

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Our Lamb

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There’s a new breed of lamb in the world 

with wool the color of sapphires. 

They drift past strip malls and shiver

on highway medians, too young to graze. 

They have no mothers. Scientists made them. 

​

There’s one lamb my sister loves best. 

It shoves its side against her shin, 

she burrows her hands in its fleece. I want 

to be useful: infant’s bottle, milk

from the Kwik Fill. What do I know?

​

I sit on a playground bench,

the warm head locked in my arm.

The lamb swallows fast and hard,

leaves just a few cloudy bubbles,  

never squirms or bleats. 

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When I set it down it sways

on its feet, then twists itself into a knot

that gets smaller and smaller.

Cat made of evening. Shimmering

hedgehog. Plum-colored vole. Black ant.

​

A spider drops to the ground

on silk so fine we can’t see it,

wraps the ant so there’s nothing left

and reels it home. Please tell me what

wrong my thick fingers have done.

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Wisdom Of Crowds  

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never liked tight spaces never wished to dissolve in the sizzle of thousands of veined wings sweet fug of hive mind even the jam of piled shopping carts at Walmart makes me break a sweat that rally in the seventies Manhattan 35,000 of us holding up peace signs swaying singing Give Peace a Chance John and Yoko

onstage but given the wall of heads raised arms I had to accept that on faith today for all the empty air I keep around me I feel people breathing on all sides enthusing over terriers infants cakes pink hair we all adore the same podcasts all want love to snow down on our heads my mother says she sees small children dressed in pastel party clothes massed in her apartment even in Panera dancing Hokey Pokey sashaying closer but each time right before their fingers touch her face those kids evaporate she takes it on faith they’re not there it’s just her brain cells working overtime to bring her joy.

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Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, SWWIM Every Day, Verse Daily and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York.