A POEM by KRISTEN REID

The Winged Victory of (Insert Your Name)

These are legs

arms

hands

feet

that move like stone,

creating a marble statue

of a long-forgotten being

that now exists as hardened flesh and muscle

with limbs of pain

like the sharp chisel that cut them

into this new creation.

A statue of the likeness of a once

mobile, living existence

now frozen in this new form of marble

to shield the destruction inside

and the struggle of living

beneath hardened muscles and a blank expression.



This is the final art form

of an existence cut and formed

from Marble and Stone.

And the Grecian creation asks why

she could not be a watercolor painting of

easy, flowing movement

or stained glass of

ever-changing bright color

to see the sun without ache.

But we subject matters

have no say in

our composition

our medium

our final form.

We can only exist as we were meant to exist:

as art.



Is the Venus de Milo affected

by society’s demands for

fully intact art?

Does the Winged Victory of Samothrace not rival

all marble creations

despite its missing parts?

Then are we not the Winged Victory of (insert your name)?

Are we not beautiful rivals

of “perfections” like David?

Because of our marvelous strength

in Marble and Stone

we keep existing

through the freezing and

through the loss of pieces

that crumble and leave us

with little left of our heads.

We are art capturing pain

but art, nonetheless,

that captures gods and goddesses

in their own right.

And there is a beauty in Marble and Stone.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace is beautiful for its missing parts.

The Venus de Milo is beautiful for its missing parts.

Thus we,

my fellow art pieces,

are beautiful for our missing parts.

For the Marble and Stone

has made us the most formidable

form of art.

Because we know battle

and we know sharp edges

and we know what it is like

to fight for existence.

For watercolors

and oils

and clay

do not know what it is like

to be chiseled down

from what they once were

with tools of pain

and look even more beautiful

in their final form.

We, Marble and Stone, do.


Kristen Reid lives in East Tennessee with her cat, Lestat, and is a graduate student at Tennessee Tech University. She has fiction featured with Broadswords and Blasters, Scare Street, Springer Mountain Press, and The Horror Tree, and has poetry featured with Anti-Heroin Chic. You can find her on Twitter @Kris10BelleReid or on Instagram @writerkristenreid.

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TWO POEMS by CHARLES J. MARCH III

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A THING by TRISTAN OSCAR SMITH