Even Days by Ken Poyner

I took all the qualities that I thought made up my citizenship and gave them to the mermaid I was secretly in love with. She organized them, and began to apply them to rattling the waves and dividing the sea into houses for the finned and houses for the unfinned. She mocked the water and the chastened spray bristled me longingly, cautiously. I watched amazed, wondering why this was something I could not do, and understanding my love was but lust, and my citizenship conditional.

Ken Poyner’s latest book of short fictions is “Constant Animals”, and his next book of speculative poetry, “The Book of Robot” is due out in early 2016. He has appeared in “Poet Lore”, “Analog”, “The Blue Collar Review”, and hundreds of other places. He has been nominated for three Pushcart prizes, and not won any. He has one wife, four cats, two fish.