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Medusa’s #Metoo
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Blackness shellacs my cave
but for the locked foyer with its glass
a moth born in the time
of dinosaurs and grown over-large
stopped spread-winged
on the pane, still and completed.
What is there about my walls
that stop life? The finch
that saw its soulmate
in a reflection, lying broken-necked
on my porch, the man whose eyes
caught mine, my own
famished for his form that perfected
itself in Brazilian granite
by sight of my teeming serpents
my out of control weeping
from this solitude I keep
My revenge from Athena this curse
a coverup through tweet and text
a smear campaign of slut and sext
Poseidon in Athena’s studio apt
My pterodactyl wings catch
on the limestone, grow runners,
they call me floozy, stink, death.
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Luanne Castle’s Kin Types (Finishing Line), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a fi-nalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first poetry collection, Doll God (Aldrich), was win-ner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she studied at University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her writing has appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, Glass, Verse Daily, and other journals.
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North of Oxford 
Reblogged this on Luanne Castle's Writer Site and commented:
So thrilled that my poem “Medusa’s #Metoo” has been published at North of Oxford. Most of my life, I took the myth of Medusa as I had been fed it: that she was a monster who turned men into stone when they looked at her. Perseus was the hero of the story for cutting off her head. But look further. Medusa was a beautiful woman who was raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. For Poseidon’s crime, Athena blamed Medusa and turned her into the deathly face framed by serpents instead of hair that we know her by. Surely Medusa’s #metoo story is an important one.
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Thank you for this. So many of the women in myths were victims like this. I’ll never think of Medusa the same way again!
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Congratulations on your publication, Luanne! I subscribe to North of Oxford, and I was so excited when I saw your face. You’ve given voice to Medusa’s victimization very effectively.
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