Banshee • • • Tilly Boraks

heitara

Caroline Siebert

Content Warning: mentions of sex work Artist Statement: heitara (literal translation is “courtesan) is a poem I wrote from the point of view of Phryne, an Ancient Greek sex worker who was able to grow rich and influential in her own right through her work.

they called me phryne because whores can’t commemorate virtue

my toad-body second to none in its godliness and beauty

i became art itself the mortal-immortal goddess venus

my flesh tainted by my profession but the men not tainted by me

they consumed me cut me into parts a historical butchering minus the head, which no one would buy nothing more than a mannequin emphasis ‘man’ saved by sexy

they will not know how i, the ‘sallow-skinned’ courtesan could have rebuilt their cities with the mountains of gold that i made rain down from the bleak sky like calandra i transformed men into clouds and controlled them with sheer will.

they will not know my mind my soul, my heart my wit my wealth my self

the woman who dared to steal the gods’ fire and dance with it through the streets of thebes