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.
