Medusa Tries Selling on Etsy 

by Alison Hurwitz


There’s the libel lawsuit, online therapy, wifi. Her damp grotto
keeps on leaking, plus the price of snake food has skyrocketed.  
Medusa’s pregnant, single, broke and desperate. It’s time 
she got creative. So Saturday, she decides to merchandize. 

Arachne doesn’t call her back, so she learns to weave 
through YouTube, shapes discarded skins like raffia for hats, 
desiccated edges hissing into pattern, shedding molt like chaff. 
Each braided brim designed to throw a different kind of shade.

Early Sunday morning, she piles accumulated stiffs, stacks 
them into pyramids, logs of every jerk who smirked too long, 
then smashes them to rubble. A new angle on Pet Rocks. 
Get yours acid-etched, his name on it for only 5 bucks more.

Monday morning and she’s accessorized, moved on to kitsch: 
snake eye pendants, collectible fangs, a picnic set with serpent 
tines, forks sharp enough to pierce your meat straight through, 
her face on key chains reading Hello, Gorgonous.

On Tuesday, she adds a beauty line: lipstick shades in 
Take Him for Granite, in Venom. Her makeup line: 
If Looks Could Kill. She watches online storefront videos, 
reads through guides: How to Scale Your Business. Sighs.

Wednesday, she debuts her signature perfume: 
Minerva Blames the Maiden. The scent’s complex: 
fire and mineral notes, blood and spunk, burnt incense, ash. 
On the label fallen columns, twisted limbs, a toxic goddess watching.

Thursday, getting frenzied, she pivots into gimmicks, 
attempts to meme herself. Sad refrigerator magnets, quipping: 
“You think you have problems? Try being pregnant 
with a winged horse and a giant.” They don’t catch on.

By Friday, disgusted and discouraged, she gets a little OCD,
can’t stop making Medusa bobble-heads: each snake on springs 
that sing eponymous songs: Kailey Morgue, Whitney Avalon. 
Dirty Heads. Her serpents writhe with laughter.

She tries renaming her Etsy storefront Agency 
(no one wants to buy the same old Rage,) but 
by Saturday she’s given up, exhausted, adrift in badly 
spelled catch-phrases, too many cheap knock-offs from China. 

Medusa goes to bed and watches as the ceiling seeps. 
Her serpents wreathe the walls in mythic shadows.
I am so damn tired, she says below her breath. 
Her snakes respond in sibilance, in whisper. 
They shift her into sleep.


* * * * *

Alison Hurwitz is a former cellist and dancer who now finds music and movement in language. A two-time 2023 Best of the Net Nominee, she is the founder/host of the monthly online reading, Well-Versed Words. Widely published, Alison’s work is forthcoming in Sky Island Journal, South Dakota Review, Hole in the Head Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. When not writing, Alison officiates weddings and memorial services, takes singing lessons, walks in the woods with her family, and dances in her kitchen. Find her at alisonhurwitz.com