by Megan McDermott

after Julia Margaret Cameron’s “2d. version study after the Elgin Marbles”, 1867

where contestants had to pretend to be living
statues, staying very still as pigeons landed
on their heads and arms. What grand traditions
of mimicry! Women mimicking sculptures
mimicking women – layers of pretend.
Here, these women, long dead, are young
forever, invulnerable to jostling or knocked
off limbs or even interruption from the husbands
and children that likely came later. Maybe
we aspire to be statuesque because we dream
of human appearance freed from our defining
places, times, and people. Though of course
these women aren’t alone, but solid in togetherness,
in softness. The touch of their bodies – I would
never think of marble. There is something liquid
even in memorialized life.

Megan McDermott is a poet and Episcopal priest living in Richmond, Virginia. Her first full-length collection, Jesus Merch: A Catalog in Poems, was published by Fernwood Press. She is also the author of two chapbooks, Woman as Communion (Game Over Books) and Prayer Book for Contemporary Dating (Ethel Zine and Micro-Press). Her poems have been published in a variety of journals, including the Maine Review, Amsterdam Review, U.S. Catholic, and more. She is a first-year MFA student in poetry at Virginia Commonwealth University. Connect with her at meganmcdermottpoet.com.