Ponyo Poem

By Emdash

Hiking in an underwater Elysian Park,
my dear friend Connie tells me
her partner doesn’t know who Ponyo is.

How did you explain her to them?
“If the Little Mermaid was a bad bitch,”
she says, herding her hair into a messy bun.

The cara cara sun does a little shimmy
as we run atop crests of waves;
two kindred femmes, farewelling

to swim eastward, pufferfish anxious.
She & I catch-up over a crunchwrap
supreme—the mistakes, the snakes.

We dream of alphabets, grow gills
from the hyphen of girl & woman.
Soon, we marigold across

27-inch waist tidepools
teeming with life: glub glub glub.
Jellyfish arch eyebrows at us.

Connie lifts up the lip of her bubble:
“When are you moving?”
A pebble spoons into my shoe.

“Zoom—I mean soon.”
glub glub glub. Together
we try to discern how to be human.

We sail home in her toy boat;
inside jokes surge to the front
like vying dolphins.

Her laugh: my ham ramen.
She & I gush over Rihanna’s red hair
like we know her personally. Confetti.

Granmamare alley-oops us home,
our chicken legs chortling.

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Emdash AKA Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) is a writer, open mic maker, and child of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. To see her publication history, visit emdashsays.com. They’ve earned funding from Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, Jersey City Arts Council, Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference, and University of Rutgers-Newark—where they received an MFA in Poetry and taught undergraduates. In 2023, she received Best of the Net nominations in poetry and microfiction. They are Missouri-born, California-raised and based in anxiety. When not writing, she’s most likely finding korok seeds.