Simone Muench and Jackie K. White
Lee Miller Sparks a Solar Flare
against her assailant, turning the body
from blue hat to halo, confronting
every camera with the camouflage of bare
skin—a salute to her own indestructible
eye. Its metronomic vision shifts from atelier
to field hospital, pearled veil to bullet.
No longer their “modern girl” slipping off
pavement, she cages the birds of white aprons
and gas masks, plucks blond curls with pink claws,
hews the catwalk into a buckeye limb and leaps
from pigeonholes, forward into the frontlines declaring
I’d rather take a photograph than be one.
NOTE: This poem is from a series of poems that engage with the artwork, biographies, histories, and writings of women surrealists who have been historically marginalized.