excerpt: Medusa’s Diner by Paula Friedrich

I was captivated when I read this poem the other day in a book titled “Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry.” The book acts as an instructional for slam poetry contests and includes a collection of pieces by many talented poets, such as Derrick Brown and Beau Sia.

Here is an excerpt from Paula Friedrich’s poem, Medusa’s Diner:

“every scale on her head tipped the wrong way,
every tongue suggesting different lies
and seagulls only turning into wood.

Medusa’s lover is a blind snake-charmer;
His hair stands on end.
When they dance, Medusa rattles
down to her belly and her hips and her feet.
The rhythm is a lover, is a brother is a song buried alive and
moving like
arteries shifting when marble sucks
the surfaces of her feet linen breaking
bread into biscuits for decades to chew on
when she dances, her desire
is a head full of dragons, cunning fusion of flames
blowing up the highway, licking grease into gold
breathing down the necks
of the ones who write bad checks
and adding extra bacon in a bad month.

Her sweat is poison;”