She is not beached, but rather
here of her own volition,
slapping the man's sands,
seeking his lighthouse,
its intermittent eye scanning
for victims, while her fin glistens,
wheeling under the white eye of the moon,
illuminating her stiffened nipples,
but she requires no man
yet will have one this night,
with all the intoxicated pleasures
for which the uprights yearn,
taut in their tight white skeins,
easy enough to unravel a man.

She knows he will eagerly clamber
down from his electric perch
to strip his outer flesh
and he will obediently come to her,
unwittingly aiding her
in propagating her race,
this repugnant act,
till finally she unhooks him.

And the siren's melody
yanks him down from the hard
fast safety of the lighthouse,
and he, mesmerized by the miracle
of the seaweed that clings to her hair,
her soft-scented moisture glistening,
in the reflection of the one-eyed moon,
illuminating flashes of her tail,
as her trance lures him
to the ocean, to the vociferous
violence of the waves and somehow
all he sees is the stern of an ancient,
three-masted barquentine,
a ghost manning the hinged rudder,
as he slowly slips beneath
the moon that reflects
off the undulant waves,
the song swallowed now,
and he moronically smiles
as he drowns in retribution,
having littered the beach,
where even the light of the tower
refuses to seek, where no man
can spy beneath the dunes,
where the sand-filled sockets of women
stare at their unlit sky, alone, abandoned,
their mouths choked with sand,
as many grains as there are stars.*

*Eight women were murdered and buried beneath the dunes along Ocean Parkway, Fire Island. A man and a baby were also among the victims, bringing the total to ten. 

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