Medusa con­sid­ers her lover, Poseidon

by KL Pereira

He likes to let down my hair, his water-cool fin­gers unfurling 

the ser­pents and their silken

tongues til their scaly bod­ies scrape the sandy floor of the seabed,
that corn­flower room where mon­sters make love.

He stretch­es supine over the shad­owed sand as blue as a 

corpse and cur­rents course

and shiv­er as my hair slith­ers up his strong sea-legs,
curl­ing around his sharp hips, pro­trud­ing aching and slick

Even when he cries, he won’t feel my hands; not that it’s an 

unrea­son­able demand.

It’s just that I love to watch him slither.

Who else can say they get the God of the Sea off with a brush, 

a mere ser­pen­tine tickle?

My shin­ing sea-lizards like to lick, stretch­ing over him, 

trail­ing tears and sweat,

sear­ing mus­cles hot and wet, they thrash together,

grop­ing writhing skin, unhook­ing jaws, 

leav­ing full-moon bites, venus blood pooling

in that under­wa­ter room of night.

Even when he begs, I know he nev­er wants me to stop;
Even when he screams, he knows I won’t.

When he final­ly catch­es his breath,
he wraps him­self in whis­pers of wet under­bel­ly, my

hair for once docile against his back, 

my hands float­ing above his grin

And he asks me to hurt him again.

---

KL Pereira is obsessed with the creepy, creaky under­bel­ly of life and what­ev­er lies beyond. She holds a BA in Lit­er­a­ture and Lan­guages from Bard Col­lege, an MA in Gender/Cultural Stud­ies from Sim­mons Col­lege, and an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing from God­dard Col­lege. Her poet­ry, fic­tion, and non­fic­tion explor­ing top­ics such as Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er, the his­to­ry of Won­der Woman, gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty, post­mod­ern fairy tales, and zine cul­ture have been pub­lished in Bitch Mag­a­zine, Clam­or Mag­a­zine, The Pitkin Review, Girlis­tic Mag­a­zine, The Hub Jour­nal: Boston’s Lit­er­ary Occa­sion­al, Girlis­tic Mag­a­zine, and Girl Cul­ture and Boy Cul­ture (col­lec­tions from Green­wood Press).  Pereira is hard at work on a col­lec­tion of flash fic­tion fairy tales and young adult novel.

Filed under: Jabberwocky 5