Misogynistic Effigy

Every fourth Tuesday the Lighthouse Writers host a drop-in writing session at the Denver Art Museum.  The Denver Art Museum, or DAM as we locals like to say, is a world class experience each visit.  Add the bonus of a bit of ekphrastic writing for a visual prompt kind of gal like me and I am a happy camper.  Or maybe that should be urbanite!

Today's workshop took place in Jeffrey Gibson's exhibit Like a Hammer.  I wrote a piece that probably had nothing to do with his vision or his message.  I simply pressed my pen onto my pad of paper and allowed my hand to follow the lead.  Raw and unedited.  Enjoy!

Misogynistic Effigy

A quintet, count them, please
Five headless, elegant women
Hanged in misogynistic effigy

Their hips narrowed like
Boys, only the smallest
Remnant of peplum

Decapitated beauties
Sacrificed legs no longer
Needed to support them

Men no longer needed
To support them
No longer in need of men
To bolster girth or worth

Their eulogies painstakingly
Embroidered where their
Breasts once protruded

Chains that had adorned
Their decolletage, now suspend them
In morbid immortality

Personal mission statements
Emblazoned upon the
Cylindrical sameness, mindless memories
Of days.  Long past