Pep Talk for Medusa

Don’t let the girls with straight hair tell you
you’re unlovely. Your kinky hair abominable,

pretty as a whip. Your hair hissing like rain
the sound shame makes when we sleep.

When I was seven, a girl touched my curls
and asked if I ever brushed them, if I had a mom,

where I was from. She meant who was taking care
of me. Who let me look this unruly. I told her

I too started girlish in the world
like poppies emerging feverish before

someone else’s hunger made me venomous
as a woman. At a party in Bedstuy, a Latina

with thin, straight hair will say we’re lucky
to be pretty, white-passing. She didn’t know

my curls were brushed flat, buried
beneath a slick nest of a bun. Answer me, Athena.

In how many languages will I have to apologize
for someone else’s gaze? Tell them it wasn’t my eyes

that killed anyone, but simply the reflection
of their own dark staring back at them.

After the party, I went home and showered
then stared in the mirror at my brown skin,

black eyebrows, brown nipples, dark cunt
wondering if anyone could see me clearly

and to whom I was god, monster.




Reprinted from Someone Else's Hunger (Four Way Books, 2025) with the permission of the author.