The Gorgon’s Last Dream

Asleep on the stone floor,

between her snoring sisters, the monster

dreams of a starry night in Pylos when

she’d seduced some foolish fisherman.  He’d professed

unable to turn from her stare,

and said her hair, twisted by the salt air

into long, screw-shaped curls

held him fast.  Though she’d laughed, young,

drunk on wine, she granted that

she’d often gazed at her grace in the glass,

and felt a stony stillness.  The constellation

of freckles across her nose, her glare,

the flashing leer of her beauty

at times frightened her.  Dreaming still, she remembers

how she’d vanquished this naive boy

then returned to her own cool bed

to stroke the kinks from her teeming hair.

How she’d prayed for a new man to come–

the one who pursues without pursuing.

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Aaron Brame has a writing degree from Rhodes College in Memphis and has been a teacher of literature for the last thirteen years. His work has appeared or will soon appear in Greenhaven Press’s Perspectives on Modern World History, Straight Forward, The Squawk Back literary journal, and on his site, Aaronbrame.org. He lives in East Memphis with his wife and two children.