Self-Portrait as The Gorgons

Written By Stephanie Dinsae

Are those beasts or vicious

dykes

in their place?

try us stifled 

and we will turn 

on you we love 

us so much 

we will stiffen

your hurt 

into stone

misery 

we are fluid, as in 

our timeless 

slithering tresses

adorn our heads as guardians 

of our fantasies

incessantly 

hissing

into our ears

there is more to come

this can be ours

if we just open

our eyes to experience

us in full

leave behind 

the wincing 

the denial squinting

become the unbound lovers

the untamed sapphics

carving out

a freeing life for us we are

hushed 

shunned 

gorgons 

and find it 

necessary

we must

find more like us

Stephanie Dinsae

A poet and Black Classicist from the Bronx, New York, Stephanie Dinsae is a 2019 Smith College graduate and has received an MFA in Poetry and Literary Translation. She often writes poetry about myth as it relates to Blackness and her own life, video games, friendship, and the fallibility/flexibility of memory. Currently, she is published in The Common, hex, Cartridge Lit, Exposed Brick Literary Mag, Dipity Literary Magazine, Burrow Press Review, BRINK, ANMLY, and The Seventh Wave. Her favorite things to do are dance around to music and obsess over astrology. In case you were wondering, Stephanie has major Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius placements.

https://www.theblackmedusa.com
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Decoding: My Art, Sexuality and Disability