A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

. . . and her severed head said to Perseus,

Releasing the Kraken 67 ...and her severed head said to Perseus, Corrina Bain one. The day I saw your ship flyspeck on the horizon, fear stormed in your heart as you recognized the stones that had been men I know that you remember. Try to brush it from your eyes like a bad dream. Telling Andromeda how you fought for her whispering into the apricot nectar of her hair, how brave you had been. The sea was hammer dented steel— you pulled yourself ashore, the shield, one of the holy gifts given you to conquer me reflecting you back shuffled toward me like a crab sword stuck out behind you, ridiculous I had to do it myself, eyelashes crashing together like iron filings I sunk my scaly neck into the blade the hissing protest in my head finally stilled I could see your reflection, light pouring like blood out your face 68 A Face to Meet the Faces dark, fallible flesh that you hide and flatter so close, I could smell the inside of your mouth like wet silk sick with fear, sweat beading your wide back some hot bellows under the earth calling my name two. my corpse became your weapon forced to watch it, eyes hung in the air, the legions you turned to stone. The girl you pried from her father’s arms using only the threat of my name try to imagine, in the muscled sarcophagus of your hero’s body, being so ugly that it petrifies. To know in the glare of your gaze what you destroy, pink sponge of their lungs sopping marrow of their long bones transmuted into stone, your terror, even now as you think of it. When you see girls at the bazaar, hieroglyphics made of meat, the trophy proof of your worth you think of me. Nights, instead of blood rolling into your groin like sobbing, a hollowness in their painted faces shocks you back. The fear that I will blossom in the dark of your daughter’s bodies Releasing the Kraken 69 Home, curling yourself around your bride you tell again, how hideous I was. The things you had to do to my body to keep her safe skeleton key unlocking her city’s bright gate and my head, gently rotting in your leather sack, laughs The story you do not tell, Perseus, do you even remember it When you were born— the fever they thought would kill you How the physician found a second heart asleep beside your heart Removed it, cast the bloody scrap behind your house, raw flesh hatching the snakes that nearly poisoned you. And I grew eyes. In the trash heap. In earshot of your infant wailing. I grew legs, the pulpy vise of my new gums making a noise that was nearly your name. ...