top of page
a poem lost in the walls of an art museum
WRITTEN BY IRIS CHEN
A thousand faces bare
a thousand variations of Mona Lisa’s smile,
vestigial traces felt only
when explanation supersedes art,
like the Prussian Blue that coats trees
still redolent with the stench
of human flesh singed on wire,
captivity molded into
a 47” frame we snapshot
against the music coating Parisian alleys so
violently rhythmic it catalogues midday
as if it were a scene edited out a film
on art and our glorified pasts.
Art lines the walls,
Waiting for these seconds of glory.
bottom of page