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.