Medusa’s Lament by Catherine Graham

February 2, 2023
Poem title: Medusa’s Lament Poet name: Catherine Graham Poem: My rage has never belonged to me. Phallic hisses snake from my scalp, remind my powers to turn men to stone. From the deepest marrow, I’ve become beauty-uglied. Vital. Fresh. My mother rose from stone. Trilobites fossiled her into shape. Stone, buried want, to be cradled—back— into her crevice—to be fluid, contained. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Catherine Graham Previously published in Exile Magazine, Volume 43 no.4 Catherine Graham is an award-winning poet, novelist and creative writing instructor. Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and Toronto Book Award and won the CAA’s Fred Kerner Book Award. Her sixth collection of poems, The Celery Forest, was named a CBC Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. A previous winner of TIFA’s Poetry NOW, she leads its monthly book club, interviews for By the Lake Book Club, co-hosts The Hummingbird Podcast and teaches creative writing at University of Toronto SCS where she won an Excellence In Teaching Award. Author of The Most Cunning Heart and the award-winning novel Quarry, she has been a finalist for the Sarton Book Award, the Montreal International Poetry Prize and has won the Miramichi Reader Award for Best Fiction and an IPPY Gold Medal for Fiction. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected Poems appears spring 2023. www.catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet