Medusa, Preparing to Turn a Man to Stone, Anya Chabria (March 2026)

 

Medusa, Preparing to Turn a Man to Stone

(Mosaic Floor: Medusa, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston)

You ask why my poems are locked between my teeth;
dear sir; innocence is perjury and the world 
broadcasts my vice, therefore I have no choice 
but this mind, this monologue; you say
the world has changed; I must look outside;
you claim I will find towers well beyond Olympus;
green tongues, flushed cheeks, venom on tap;  
but windows are for fools; I am stone; the Lady 
of Thought offers no space for self-reflection; perhaps 
she has none to give; my self-portrait is a mosaic 
of shattered mirrors; took hours to make; I adore it so; 
any robbery would be such egregious sin; see me
there, a round-faced girl, hardly a knotted misery; so 
sweet, so fresh, so gentle; young to the world’s terrors.