I Ask Medusa
by Emma Kaiser
Ocean Mist by Britnie Walston
I ask Medusa what it is like to be seen. That stare turned venomous, face that stuns to stone. They say you were a great beauty—but beauty can wound as much as ugliness. Poseidon gazed on you and took you in, then took you by force, defiled Athena’s priestess in her temple. As punishment, Athena cursed you. Gave you serpents in place of the curls she envied, forced you into exile. They say you feared your own power, even grieved the violence of your gaze. But I wouldn’t.
You don’t look like a cursed woman to me. Equipped with a defense against that which seeks to possess you. Unclaimable, untouchable, even the thought of you unobtainable. I’d like to believe my gaze that dangerous. What is it like being the last face they ever see? Your reflection fading and pooling like milk in their sockets?
*
I’m fascinated by how my image can exist apart from my body. Stagnant still lives of the self caught up in film, in paint, in memory. I hate seeing my body caught unaware in candids, a reflection without consent. It’s then I see it: my crooked posture, bloated middle, lips pulled back over my gums when I show teeth, all these projections I can’t see or control.
When I was a child, I imagined a book that contained everything anyone had ever said about me—gossip, praise, my name passing through conversations—and though I knew it would wound me, I also knew that I would read every word. The book never appeared, so instead I review old photos of myself, try to survey my form through different eyes. I take turns looking at myself as my ex, my mother, an almost lover, a woman I envy, a man at the bar. I want to peer through their eyes at my body, understand what they see, what I do not. I try to recognize myself as someone not filtered through someone else’s gaze but find I can’t. So I hide myself away, reclaim myself only when no one else is there to see.
*
At an outdoor concert, a man twice my age working security lets me know I am being observed—by himself and others. Up until this moment I believe myself to be self-aware. I feel conscious of how I take up space, how I move in relation to other bodies, how fabric clings to my limbs, the way I walk and position myself. But then the security guard with a mustache and beer gut stands over me, makes me take a step back. “Me and the boys been watchin’,” he says. Points to other men standing near the stage, leering. They project stares I hadn’t felt until pointed out. They hit like cold water on my skin. The man asks if another man is coming to claim me, that he’s stupid for leaving me here alone. As I walk away, I turn back to see him filming me. Now he is the one laying claim. Set on possessing and preserving me there—this record of my body, my movements, that he will later do with as he pleases.
I think of the friend from high school who admitted to jerking off to a photo of me in a blue dress. I think of showing up at a guy’s house in college and being informed by him and his friends that we’d be playing strip poker. I think of being at the same bar as a man who had asked me for nudes, overhearing him ridicule a girl who had actually sent them. What would it be like to curse their thoughts of me? Petrify them before they could settle in their skulls?
*
Aquatic by Britnie Walston
Medusa—meaning guardian or protectress. Even after they beheaded you, your dead eyes remained potent enough to kill. You face transformed from possession, to trophy, then weapon—finally inscribed upon Athena’s shield. Not even your curse was yours to keep. They couldn’t leave you in peace, unseen. I think about tattooing your image between my eyes, or wearing you like an amulet. My own shield against selfish want.
I both resent and yearn to be a thing beholden. So many pieces and clones of self walking around in too many minds, contorted in memory. A body fragmented in impossible inventory. Tell me, Medusa: what is it like to stop them in their tracks?
About the Author:
Emma Kaiser is the winner of the Norton Writers Prize. Her work is featured or forthcoming in River Teeth, The Normal School, Craft, Great River Review, Rock & Sling, and elsewhere, and she is the author of three children's nonfiction books. She is currently a Creative Writing MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. You can find her on Twitter at @emmasharonkaiser.
