This one comes from an in-class writing assignment in a poetry class I'm currently taking in Chautauqua, NY. (I highly recommend the Writers' Center here for its fabulous workshops.) The assignment was to adopt the persona of someone from mythology and explore how things might look from his/her perspective.
Medusa
It was no better when I was a beauty.
Even then each man who saw me
either froze or blindly fled.
And as for the gods, great Poseidon
simply seized what he wanted
then left me to Athena’s care.
She, my patron goddess, was more concerned
with her temple’s purity than my body’s rape,
and I, her priestess, became her pariah –
my punishment: these serpentine curls,
this stony stare, and statues for friends.
Now I’m worse than the sightless,
the blind who have no gaze at all.
Mine kills what it longs to look at,
making lively scenes tableaux mordant.
That’s why I’ve let Perseus steal upon me,
to safely see my reflection in his shield,
where I can also savor his brave surprise
as he finds my features both fierce
and fair. It is too late for us to stop
his sword, but I feel strangely fulfilled.
To see and be seen seems worth being killed.
Medusa
It was no better when I was a beauty.
Even then each man who saw me
either froze or blindly fled.
And as for the gods, great Poseidon
simply seized what he wanted
then left me to Athena’s care.
She, my patron goddess, was more concerned
with her temple’s purity than my body’s rape,
and I, her priestess, became her pariah –
my punishment: these serpentine curls,
this stony stare, and statues for friends.
Now I’m worse than the sightless,
the blind who have no gaze at all.
Mine kills what it longs to look at,
making lively scenes tableaux mordant.
That’s why I’ve let Perseus steal upon me,
to safely see my reflection in his shield,
where I can also savor his brave surprise
as he finds my features both fierce
and fair. It is too late for us to stop
his sword, but I feel strangely fulfilled.
To see and be seen seems worth being killed.
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