Harriet, the wizened director
in the crumbling State home
said that the Board was like a mermaid,
prone to looking good on the surface,
but with an ugly tail that does all the work.
It seemed incongruous in her case,
as if through bad luck
she had to swim upside down.
But that's how things were there,
only thirty years ago.
I'd caught Mrs. Thompson
snapping a rubber band
in the face of a client,
and the union didn't like me.
Dr. Carter said retarded people didn't feel pain,
and Dr. Nelson accused me of being in the KKK.
It was as if I'd found myself in a sea
of upside-down mermaids,
struggling to breathe under water
and hitting everything under the sun
with their angry and ill-fitting tails.
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