Here is the second of my contributions to Nicky Morton’s Transformations, a reworking by several poets of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

A prose translation of the original story can be found here.

13 free associations on the tale of Jupiter and Callisto

1. A jovial philanderer crouches behind some bushes, staff in hand.

2. Nymph, in thy orisons be thy sins remembered. She doesn’t hear his words. Something dark tugs at her eye.

3. I’m just a sweet transvestite! screeches Red John, strutting like a peacock. His plumage bristles, green-eyed.

4. Little Bear weeps. Who’s been sitting in my chair? Meanwhile, Mummy Bear has a shit in the woods.

5. Diana, Princess of Wales, Queen of Hearts, shrieks: Off with her maidenhead!

6. She goes all moony around Mr Big Bollocks.

7. At the heart of this story you’ll find deceit, sexual predation and rape. It’s very life-affirming. Very heart-warming. A classic.

8. Did you do a sex wee?

9. Bath time under a light, white as God.

10. Where’s the poetry in this? Would you like something prettier?

11. A pregnant pause while she deranges herself. The broken mirror gives back her image, multiplied by thirteen.

12. A simple enough story. A man, a woman, a pleasure garden. Where is the snake?

13. The poet of the Void spins stories into the World Wide Web.

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