Lisa Creech Bledsoe

The Gorgon Comes For Her Own

Ugliness is so unpredictable.
There are three ways to be beautiful
and thousands to be monstrous.
You should see it was never about the snakes.
The chaos, however, couldn’t be forgiven—
couldn’t be combed down into wet furrows
or spit-licked into swollen rows.

In the photo she has tusks and blood and
flared nostrils. Your finest nightmare
crashing the status, crushing the party.
They’d like to blame someone—preferably her,
for who knows her mother’s secret sin?
You can’t trust hidden influences.
They never wear name tags.

What would you call yourself by—

Loved and not abandoned?
Something worth fighting for?

When the gorgon sings for you
it will be muscle and monsoon. She will
meet your eyes. Who knows how many times
you’ll be bitten, suddenly
known, unhidden.

Watched by crows and friend to salamanders, Lisa Creech Bledsoe is a hiker, beekeeper, and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. She is the author of two full-length books of poetry, Appalachian Ground (2019), and Wolf Laundry (2020). She has poems out in Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Chiron Review, Otoliths, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and Quartet, among others.