Womens Poetry

Archive | For Mahsa, a poem for the women of Iran | by Victoria Gugenheim

It was the merest strands of hair, / On a girl adept at daylight / That were wayward signs to these infernal men.

Medusa Rising

14 Oct 2025 — 2 min read

It was the merest strands of hair,
On a girl adept at daylight
That were wayward signs to these infernal men.
Their sights set on those tresses,
Deemed impure,
Hair equals harlot they inferred.
They never saw the human;
female, woman, whole, ambitious, kind,
It mattered not to them;
Those praetors of flesh,
Policing every woman's breath;
That they could get away with
Their deeds as lowly as their words,
Unconscionable.
Each insult, brick and kick they hurled at her
For this imagined slight against their honour
A projection of their virulent insides.
They were but dogs to her,
Barbaric, brutal, bludgeoning,
They could not bear her light,
And with their rape and fury at her spirit,
Snuffed it out,
The most malicious way to go,
The taking of a life for daring to be girl.
At her last breath,
the women of Iran, pain in their breast,
Of another fallen sister surged,
Her flatline electrified their cries, of AZADI
Mahsa no longer mortal,
Beyond flesh she is idea,
And as she laid in wake
Each woman fated
To accept a state as bleak
Took to the streets,
Hair unbound, fists raised and bodies free,
Her fallen light their fire,
As they set alight hijabs,
They will no longer be kowtowed,
She is a symbol of ENOUGH! to every woman of the world now,
And through her unjust execution
That shook the world,
Now dawns their revolution!
Sisters, your time is now!

WOMAN,

LIFE,

FREEDOM!

Victoria Gugenheim's art, both mainstream and alternative, has been part of a lifelong exploration of adorning and “de-othering” people through art and personal aesthetic choice. Her activism and public speaking focuses on the consequences of "othering" because othering dehumanizes, objectifies, and makes human beings targets for everything from stereotyping at best to violence, poverty and death. Through connecting art, science, visual representations of the self, with her human rights activism Victoria explores what we can become both aesthetically and intellectually. She crafts an activism supporting detransitioners everywhere, ex-Muslims in the UK, and feminist projects the UK and Europe. Visit gugeneheim.co.uk.

This poem originally appeared on her Substack.

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