“Oh, divine, degraded mother of miscreants, stippler of tipplers besmattered with spectacle, fuck up the French doors with a kick of your heel and upchuck my quandary onto its ear.”
I want women. I never have before.
Outside, starshine of flowers on an adolescent tree, where fantasy curls up her legs and watches.
Guidance can come only from one who has transcended Freudian transmutations, who left her husband for Japanese love dens, who married again for good. She who mind-melded with maidens abandoned in the woods of their own willfulness, who stomped through Siberian freak shows, sensitive to perceived aberrations, surely holds the secret of how to develop one’s dual desires, how to sup on women without abandoning mankind - the kind man who has loved me first, always.
The dark room shifts in its seat, arranging its skirt.
The British night howls empty, empty.
How to lure her?
An embellishment might do.
“Oh, Orgasm-seeker of the opalescent eyes, I offer an oiled satyr for your trampling!”
What’s the trouble, Bubble? Resplendent in a mauve kimono embroidered with nude acrobats in ardent arrangements, she breaks into the room. She circles, searching for the satyr.
“Forgive me.”
Nothing to consummate.
“I need your advice.”
Shaking her brolly, smoothing back her white mane, she perches on the arm of a tattered wingback.
I could have known you were pulling my tit! She blinks, eyes large as eggs. What’s the dip, Nipple?
“I want women. I never have before.”
I stroke my wedding dress.
“How do I transform?”
Easy!
“Is it painful? Shall I be peeled back by a rough tongue lick after lick until my skins puddle?” I slip the zipper down. “Shall I wear a scimitar? Learn to glide it back and forth and back and forth? Can I?”
It’s all quite simple, Pimple! She crosses her legs, adopts a thoughtful pose. You see, we can survive many edits. She points straight up, finger erect.
Lie down on a bed. Her opaque fingernails at my temples. Sip the tea from her lips. Her hands as long as men’s feet and frozen. She taps my nose. Slurp!
“But the True Groom who waits at the gate, tending the ivy so…tenderly. Can he be kept in the story?” Gnawing my lip as he likes, as if he had a telescope and could protrude into the sanctuary. The moon of my heart waxes then wanes. Pain, a pain.
Do you want him?
“Yes! No? I want women. I never have known before. I don’t know.”
My stomach turns over like a fish.
My dress crinkles sympathetically.
Well, dearie, a man’s head is a lion’s head.
She squats on the floor, running her finger in a circle on the wood.
Stroke it, put it to bed. Climb inside it when you want yellow horror.
Ride him like the sun rides the sky, rising and setting. There, and then on the other side.
Yes.
She taps at the window emphatically.
When the moon appears, she will shine your snakeskin onto you. Feel it?
I do.
Satin falls from my shoulders.
Slide out of an apple tree into the grass and follow your tongue.
This is all the way of nature and carnival.
She hands me a circus advertisement, “How to Transform without Cutting,” and powder kegs into sandalwood smoke.
“Thank you!”
No issue, Tissue!
I unshackle the window, step out of my wedding skin onto the tree boughs, into the moonlight.
He will wait for me to change shape in the daytime.
I know I am no anomaly.
Shari Caplan is the siren behind “Advice from a Siren,” published by Dancing Girl Press (2016). Her poems have swum into Gulf Coast, Blue Lyra Review, Deluge, Drunk Monkeys, Non-binary Review, and elsewhere. Shari’s work has earned her a scholarship to The Home School in Hudson, a fellowship to The Vermont Studio Center, and nominations for a Rhysling Award, a Bettering American Poetry Award, and a Pushcart Prize. A wearer of many tophats, she has produced and performed in “The Poetry Circus,” “The Fairy Tale Poetry Walking Tour,” and other cross-pollinations for the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. You may encounter Shari as “Betty BOOM, America’s Sweet-tart” giving intimate readings across the nation as part of The Poetry Society of New York’s “The Poetry Brothel.” She also acts passionately and works on the Development Team at AIDS Action Committee.