Published by The Freshwater Press
118A Deering Avenue
Portland, Maine 04103
email: freshwater@fieldsofplay.net

Cover Design: Jessie Numata

Copyright © 2000 by Anna Marie Kersade
email: kersade@fieldsofplay.net

Biographical Note
Anna Marie Kersade is an American poet. She was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1955 and received her B.F.A. in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1974. After college she taught high school art classes at a variety of schools in the New England area including St. Lawrence Academy. In 1993 Ms. Kersade published her first collection of poetry called Will You Draw Me? The book received very favorable reviews and won the 1993 Bolton Poetry Prize. In 1996 she gave up teaching. Her second book of poems, The Mind Fuck of Poetry was published by Night Owl Press in 1998. Kersade now lives in Kents Hill, Maine with her two daughters and numerous other animals.

Link to Kersade Poetry Index

• Mermaids I

• I Miss the One that Got Away

• Daughter of the Guitar

• Mermaids II

• Danced On

• The Sound of Music Underwater

• Mermaids III

• The Altadina Hotel-By-the-Sea

• The Altamira Drive-In Motel

• America Does Not Kiss the Assholes of Her Poets

• Tales of Whales and Angry Songs

• Love Tuned In, Love Turned Out

• Twice By Lake Pocono

• Take Home a Poet and Love Me

• & I Am

• The Beauty Fish

• Under Love Find Water

with its soiled towels & smelly linens
the Altamira Drive-In Motel
on U.S. Route 1
is the perfect place for dirty love

& in the hot & humid afternoon
the shower that can not spray hot water
can cool the fire inside the vagina
for just a moment

& the TV, activated by special deposit
is just a snowy light incidental
to the rawness of the nude souls
buried inside each other

at the Altamira Drive-In Motel cheaters cheat
they get naked with strangers &
paramours, mistresses, lonely slobs
who fuck instead of eating lunch

my lovers lie spread-eagle on smelly linens
taking a moment to fray the codes of amour
& then after crying that life is unfair
they fuck me some more

there is a strip of sand not far from Paragon Park
where lovers, drunk with love and energy
lay down blankets
& get naked

the moonlight on some nights bathes lovers
it is not a quite white light
more silver in its shine
as the sea swells the waves absorb this light

in the late summer time nights
mermaids can be seen swimming
diving into blue waves
to absorb this type of light

these mermaids are pure lovers
they have no domestic qualties
& they do not mother well
they love each other mostly

it is a life of pure love from day to night
from day in to day out
they do not know any other way
for them it is only love and light

Better to have loved and failed than never to have loved.
This is advice from those who have never really loved before.
Or, it is advice from those serial monogamists
who plunder landscapes with half-hearted stabs at happiness.
If ever you had loved and failed at love
what can be the benefit?
Let it swim away free, if it's meant to be it will swim back.
Who believes this?
Love is not about freedom.
The loved one who wants freedom
is not in love at all
& the lover who frees the loved one
is no lover but a lost soul in hell.
Hold on tight to that which is loved
that's the golden rule down here.
The axioms of experience are not proven
by forlorn lovers and escaped loved ones
those creatures never recover enough sanity
to sustain the illogic of love's failures.
Yesterday my loved one was between me
& today I am beside myself
reduced to the smarmy construction
of words so fluid they can't be fixed.
Yesterday no poetry was needed.
But today, missing the loved one who got away
all is poetry, just wet poetry.

& I am
who lights up love's trail
& washes too bright the real
who transforms the sensible stand
& ignores the business at hand
who recreates in special personal forms
who rides along a cloudy crest
& writes in order to confess
who wonders at the global sights
& treasures lonely nights
who reads in order to amuse
& leaves a beloved confused
who tells of tales that never were
& then wonders if they might occur
who looks backward to see the past
& mourns lifetimes that passed too fast
who questions all types of truth
& plays the role of rebel youth
who stands alone when old
& chants tales already told
who rings the bells of time
& plays with words & rhyme
who feels the utmost sorrow
& but just waits for tomorrow
who went to school
& played the fool
who acted like a wife
& feigned a life
who got a job
who got robbed
who had passion
who wrote about some place
who painted a human face
who always looked somewhere above
& sought out just one
special love
& I wish.