She ties her snaky hair back to get to work.
She suits up. Heavy leather gloves, canvas pants,
steel-toed boots. She pushes safety glasses
into place, snaps on a paper mask.
Medusa slaps her palms together,
seizes the worn wooden handle
of her sledgehammer, tests its satisfying
heft, swings its heavy head at the one
who turned to stone long ago, the one
whose heart hardened first. His torso cracks,
breaks off at the waist, tumbles to the grit-riddled
ground. Placing her chisel with care,
Medusa taps at his sternum, creates
a fissure, a crevice, a canyon.
Rock layers fall away, and there, his heart.
She strips off her gloves, holds its rough, irregular
structure in her bare hands. Contemplates
its shape. What strange constructions lie hidden?
What minerals seeped from his body’s water
into its empty chambers after the blood
stilled? What color layers? What crystals?
A geode’s beauty can only be seen when broken
wide open.
Gabrielle Brant Freeman’s poetry has been published in many journals, including Barrelhouse, One, Scoundrel Time, and storySouth. She was nominated for a Pushcart in 2017, and she won the 2015 Randall Jarrell Competition. Press 53 published her book, When She Was Bad, in 2016.