The Liars

She was an ugly capture,
and was smelling quite off -

'landed in nets off Batavia,
and worth five thousand dollars'

- traded for the last time
in the city of London.

But that wasn't her real story,
rather the laughed result

of a fishmonger's joke
down in Billingsgate:

Charlie stitched half a salmon
to the rotting monkey

which had been found
on Lower Thames Street,

George Cruickshank etched,
and embellished, the lie

committing the mermaid
to a much longer life.