The Undersea Crossing Guard

by Kris Herndon and Lorraine Schein

STOP! IN THE NAME OF FISH– BEFORE WE BREAK YOUR BOAT!
By order of M.E.R.M.—Mermaids’ Education and Resistance Movement

Halt!
Touch not the coral.
Touch not the fish.
The sea’s not your playground
to use as you wish!

I’m the undersea crossing guard from S.W.I.M.*
protecting my class of sea children.
I teach them how to recognize and avoid
those who would poach, hook, and cook us.

I stop the encroaching overfishers, waste dumpers, coral harvesters…
all the air-breathing enemies of our ocean home from going farther.

But I wave through other fish, friendly snorkelers, scuba divers,
fellow mermaids, selkies, pirate ghosts, and oceanographers.

*Society for the Welfare of Imperiled Marinelife

© Copyright Kris Herndon and Lorraine Schein

Kris Herndon is a writer, musician and artist whose byline has appeared in The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Entrepreneur, Wired, Metropolis, Think, Stop Smiling, Paste, Art Papers, Architecture Boston, and many other publications. Find her at @herndy on Twitter and Instagram, and see more of her work at www.herndy.com.

Lorraine Schein is a New York writer. Her work has appeared in VICE, Terraform, Strange Horizons, Enchanted Conversation, NewMyths, and Eye to the Telescope, and in the anthologies Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath and XVIII: Stories of Mischief & Mayhem. The Futurist’s Mistress, her poetry book, is available from Mayapple Press: www.mayapplepress.com

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