Spring Lake
at what had been the Aquarena Springs theme park in decades past; San Marcos, Texas
When the tour guide screams, you are close
enough to ask him if he is fine. Our flashlights
circle the surface from our kayak seats.
The guide asserts his fineness, fish tossed from
his feet. Another breaks
into thumps on my craft, behind my back.
We see where for decades piglets were thrown
into instinctive swimming. When above
the deepest parts, I feel like I’m on a thin
sheet of turbulent glass. The eels are practicing
their vowels elsewhere tonight, away from the crowd
of nutria in the reeds. You say the first thing you learned
about kayaking was how to flip over and over
to an Irish voice. Each swine would answer
to the same name when the ringing started.
You say a mermaid would surface to bottlefeed
porcine Ralph, hoofing water. The tour guide says
the man who played Tarzan swam to the bottom
to put his mouth at the spring; he was saved from gush.
What nearly drowning was like yesterday is the same
as it is when a clown smokes underwater: unhealthy. As
for nearly drowning in the future, your cousin’s great
grandson will choose to be a merman, paying
for a splice to become another one living
in the enlarged ocean. Microplastics between
their teeth, men pregnant as seahorses—whatever
people are left from my generation looking
down through glass bottom boats.
Vanessa Couto Johnson (she/they) is the author of the full-length Pungent dins concentric (Tolsun Books, 2018) and three poetry chapbooks. Dialogist, Foundry, Thrush, TERSE. Journal and others have published their poems, and their creative nonfiction appears in The Account and FEED. A Brazilian born in Texas, VCJ has taught at Texas State University since 2014.