Cauldron Anthology Issue 3: Year 1 Collection Cauldron Anthology Year One Issue FINAL 1.17.18 | Page 50
Medusa and the Stone Man
Amy Kotthaus
You must be a man of stone;
my flesh will not kneel to flesh,
soft and dying. The fever scalding
my lips consumes any skin kissed,
burning it away to a heap
of sinewless ribs. Piles upon piles,
enough to build the horse
on which I wait for a hard man
to pull my hair like I ask
without the strands dropping off
and becoming black asps biting
poison into a meaty calf.
You must be an immovable man
Compel me to pray, prostrate myself
in divinely unfamiliar supplication.
Press my searing lips to the cold
marble of your feet, cleansed
with rose water by dedicant priests.
I crave the steeped petal taste of you.
My ears ring with a sharp silence
at the absence of a binding order, and
my wrists sting with matching bands
of blistered skin, missing the chill
of silk red ribbons; they are the veins
that bleed us into each other.