Young Writers Society

La Méduse*

hands clean, [fingers clean]- homologous spike structures
signal licking the universe, plummeting into an orange fulmination
with glow-tinted-green extremities. a bath of sulfur and
phosphorous in a licorice-indigo sky. bright beacons, houses of
light, fulgent streams jutting along surface prisms.

the sea is bathed in unhealthy glow, as waves malign and frolic
with the raft of child limbs at low-center; a child of light torched
on its bow like a maiden figurehead.

a singular woman of the sea, a sailor’s bride, already a
iconic stone widow of veil-tenebrous shadows; forever awaiting
the change of tide, the change of moon. absent men neither cognizant of
yearn or dearth, swallowed by lone, purple leviathans of the deep
to dine with the twin lords of underworld and war. like jonah. like man,
the common descent of life back to the sea.

a mother’s womb, the nurturing cradle of life, against the
father’s spaded hand. patchwork boards, patchwork sail,
a fearful wreckage. the salt grizzled, prickled flesh upturned
but exhausted. the red, an orange blooded red, intertwined
between the upturned hands of prayer.

they watch as the sea -poseidon and his daughters-
(hands clean and curling), surge in fury; a double-edged
sword fashioned out of nature. painted on the world’s ceiling
is our lady of the shipwrecked: her white marble skirts
morphing into ephemeral pink, and lips painted, parted:
the divine rite of kings.

hands clean, in love with the sea.


*La Meduse (The Raft of the Medusa) is a painting by Theodore Gericault