BY SAGE CURTIS
Medusa
Laced through the gears of her eyes,
are manual watch emeralds,
are tsunamis in martini glasses,
extensions of her mouth cancer,
sore from the words stayed
gnashed back. She tries to guess
whether she’s hiding behind her fists
or is caged inside them. She tries to explain:
the color red is shaped like her rib bone.
Give her coffee, wine, cigarettes,
chocolate milk. Pacify her. Don’t let
her turn the gears in her eyes.
This is how it starts: the breaking bars
on the cage her fists make, watch
when her snake-witch gaze comes out.
She is not afraid to turn men
to stone & stone & stone. This is what prison
break feels like, she says. I think I’d love everyone
or at least—
I think I’d try.
Sage Curtis is a Bay Area writer fascinated by the way cities grit and women move. Sage's work has been published or is forthcoming in Main Street Rag, burntdistrict, Yes Poetry, The Fem Lit, Vagabond City Lit and more.