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| Raging Medusa by Cristina Biaggi, Ph.D. |
the desert is in your mouth
with your eyes you terrify
that was not how you were
anger stirred you
when the soldiers came
they punished you
and every woman they found
gods joined in the pack rape
you promised revenge
not once but for all time
against those who poisoned you
with their violence
when the soldiers beheaded you
you transformed into a winged horse
flying across the sky
wielding sunbeams
your face created terror in men
you are a mask and more
turned inward mirroring
the viewer's soul
when the soldiers spilt your blood
where your severed head fell
corals turned red we wear
these necklaces in memory of you
Susan Hawthorne has been passionately reading, thinking and writing about women's mythic history for forty years. She is the author of eight collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Lupa and Lamb (2014). Cow (2011) was shortlisted for the 2012 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize and Earth's Breath (2009) for the 2010 Judith Wright Poetry prize. Other poetry titles include The Butterfly Effect (2005), Valence (2011), Unsettling the Land (2008, with artwork by Suzanne Bellamy) and Bird and other writings on epilepsy (1999). Her poems have been translated into Indonesian, German, Spanish and Chinese. She is the author of several novels including The Falling Woman (1992), named one of the Best Books of the Year in The Australian and a verse novel Limen (2013). Her novel, Dark Matters, a meditation on poetry, violence and imaginative mythic thinking was published in 2017.
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