Siren

(for Rachel Wall)

Tears in her voice skip
stones across the waves
from a schooner ripped
like a harpooned shark,
the sails limp fins,
this woman pale and screaming
begs: please help me stay afloat.
I’m all alone out here.

All alone. Poor thing,
she cries a prophecy
before you meet your end,
before her hidden men
scream scrambling over the railings
of your vessel—

They’re all dead,
dead, no survivors;
it’s nothing but a ghost ship now.

Rachel Wall was an American pirate active off the coast of Massachusetts at the end of the 18^th century. She worked with her husband George Wall and their crew, pretending to be the sole survivor of a shipwreck, so that when other boats came to her aid, the Walls and their men would attack and kill the crew, taking the ship’s cargo for their own.

Kate Garrett’s poetry has…