“Monster Comes from the Latin for Warning” by Pamela Manasco

Medusa from the word for guardian, the daughter
of ocean gods, the name for the time in a jellyfish's life

when it swims in the ocean. Maybe you think about 
jellyfish floating, too, a milky moon jelly taken

where currents say it has to go, but jellyfish swim 
and are good at it. Before this phase they're polyps, 

stuck to a rock or coastal reef, unable to move.
Polyp from the Frenchman who thought they looked 

like an octopus and named them in Greek: many feet. 
Or polyp for the flesh hiding in any choice of your labyrinth 

body. When my uncle started really dying his doctors
had already named lung cancer, liver: ones he'd earned

though chemo kept them in check. But polyps patiently wait 
their turn for years. He never would have known about them if not

for the PET scan checking the known rot: like a job he worked, 
opening a wall to run a ceiling fan's wire and finding a black mold inside. 

He learned plumbing and electrical work from his father, 
maybe inherited the cancer too, and worked for a man 

who paid him in cigarettes and beer. Not happy 
though he'd laugh: the houseshaker boom of a drunk. 

Now I write his diagnosis on my intake forms. Close to 40, 
I'm too young for the colonoscopy, but insurance covers it 

when you're high risk. I remind myself while drinking 
lemon Gatorade and Miralax, removing my jewelry, 

tying the neck of the hospital gown: all the ways the body
hides. Did you know the girl Medusa didn't have another name 

before she was changed? Almost I said she changed, like  
she chose to do it, but I was wrong about that 

and the name, too. She was always what she was. 
But wrong is a happy word: the doctor didn't find a single thing.

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