The Flatiron Medusa

 

by Brett Rutherford

     In memory of Barbara A. Holland

If Athena had Medusa’s head
adorning her shield, what then
served as the Gorgon’s aegis?

Lo! on the flat-face Flatiron
façade, the sculpted visage
of each of the snake-locked
sisterhood, now terra-cotta
petrified, sits in a cameo
frame, a necklace of birds.

First glance, they seem
the overlap of leaf, acanthus,
but no! I say they are wings,
pigeon and dove and crow,
grackle and sparrow and tanager,
their pinions petrified
as they were caught in flight
by the Gorgon’s penetrating eye,

and here arranged
in orderly geometry, wing
overlapping wing, no feather frayed.

Clouds drift across
Medusa’s vacant eye.
Euryale, her sister, sleeps.
The stare of unforgiving
Stheno no longer mortifies.
Their serpent turbans
may frighten owls; no mouse
dare crawl upon the cornice.

Pedestrians, still buffeted
by vectors of wind
colliding at Fifth and Broadway
are too wind-tunneled there
to crane an angled glance
at the scowling trio.
Who hears
the faint hiss of serpents
when steam erupts
from beneath the pavement?

Rays from their eyes
bounce harmlessly off
the billboard demigods
posing in their underwear,
the unmanned dirigible,
the thousand glass panes
that only reflect back
their paralyzing gaze.

Bats flit
across Medusa’s cornea.
A bead of ice
obscures her iris.
A claw, tentative, seeks out
a pigeon nest
bestride her serpents.

If these three cry out
amid the tumult of traffic,
no one will hear.
If these three weep,
the acid rain
will cancel tears.