Perseus & Medusa

When Jo and I were bored, we decided the best form of entertainment would be to challenge each other to write sestinas based on random words selected from the Wikipedia page on Medusa and the OED word of the day (which was fall-back, bizarrely). Whilst Jo's was obviously better, and featured romance and death, mine is just Medusa moping about her cave for a bit. Here it is:

Still crawling out of infancy,

you closed your eyes, remembering

the stony stares of silent gazers.

They thought they’d peered behind your mask,

and they froze you with their force. Fall-back

to where each shadow soaks the echoes of your name. Medusa.

The echoes of the arms that sheltered your name, Medusa,

the hiss of the lisp of your infancy.

Arms out—the shadows overlap—fall-back.

Let the darkness cushion your remembering.

Let the darkness lick the outlines of the mask,

of the stone-cold ones you’ve overcome, your gazers.

“Ash-back eye-holes swallowed me on the street. Gazers

reframed me in the spit of their hiss. Medusa,

sitting in the shadows and stroking each death mask

with the tip of her leathered tongue. So many boys

who’ve shared their lips since infancy;

the texture of each tongue, the friction, worth remembering.

Arms out—the shadows catch my skull—fall-back.

“Fall-back, and fuck their understanding, fall-back

away from the ash-black eyes of gazers,

and later I will wake from this remembering,

but now the cave cocoons me with my name. Medusa.

This stone is the shelter of an infancy

come again. Child of darkness. Girl with the Halloween mask.”

So you spoke. “Don’t come close. My last mask

has worn through. Could you fall-back

just a little? Here, in my den of infancy,

each ash-black stone will smother gasping gazers.

My rules. My statues. The playthings of Medusa

weep blood with the force of their remembering.

“Do I see you trembling? Or am I just remembering

the man who came here last? See his death mask.

One of my best. Crying for his Medusa.

I still trace his tears. But fall-back,

this place is not for you. Your eyes are not cruel like those gazers

who’ve shrunk me since my infancy.”

I rose and put an end to her remembering.

I kept her head and stroke the snakes sometimes to mask

my guilt. I took it home. Already stone, I killed Medusa.