Fissured Tongue Series

Etiology of a Broken Leg
by Crista Reid
​Fissured Tongue Series Vol VI  |  May 2025​

"Paloma Picasso's Portrait" by Michael Thompson. Mixed media, 6 x 4 inches, 2021

Etiology of a Broken Leg

Equally arresting
Like sage and patchouli
Like, roll over on top of me
But don’t smother me.
Good morning
Good morning
You didn’t startle me.
You surprised me.
Differentiation might get the best of me.
Incoming!
In vowel sounds gutturally.
The birds are inside the house
But I paused the singing.
Perched and gesticulating
Though not frequently.
And here, the etiology
Of why I’m not wearing jeans
While busy deflecting.
Bodyworker says to
Breathe in with a clenched pussy
As the sun is setting.
Surveying for abundance
In crescent moon filings
And fingernail clippings.
Dearmoring and building literacy
While eating peach rings
Like, damn, I deserve these.
But this reminds me
Oh please
Oh please
The lap of luxury was
A bed half made until today
And now it’s causing reason.
Maybe it’s healthy to be off my knees.
Darling.
Really.
Try just sitting.
No longer disparaging
Incongruities between
Wanting and needing.
Maybe that’s a better
Cause for understanding.

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About the Author 
Crista Reid (she/her) is an artist, permission-giver, and somatic therapist. She weaves the art of communication, creative expression, sensuality, archetype, and movement as pathways to creativity and aliveness. A life-long Coloradoan, she can often be found meandering in the mountains with her dog, posted up in a hammock in the forest, flowing on the dance floor, or moonlighting as a typewriter poet.
Integrating poetic expression with the sensual immediacy of embodied awareness, her poetry has been featured at East Window Gallery as part of the collection “DISGUST: unhealthy practices” (2022), and in Ouch! Collective Vol. 2 (2023). Follow her creative journeys and visions at @creatrixcrista on Instagram.

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About the Work
In June of 2022, a tiny portion of the top of my right tibia was fractured after my road bike caught a rock on a bike path in Denver. This poem is about the fragments of life I collected while my leg was locked in position to heal for the course of six weeks. In a way, I see it as a prayer of gratitude, and of prayer of reckoning — with the hurdles of mending the body and the heart. Special thanks to A.M. who was my support during this time. 

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About the Author’s Process
I am most satisfied with poetry that comes from a stream-of-consciousness flow, a sonorous, chant-like quality at times emerging through repetition and rhyme. Poems, I believe, are prayers to the moment, each an invitation to enter more deeply into the human experience. My companion in my writing process is a 1934 Webster’s English Dictionary. This tome provides me with synchronicities, synonyms, and spectacular entry into words of interest, little line-drawn images included. ​

About the Artist
Michael Thompson is a Chicago-based artist working in a variety of mediums including print-making, collage, kites, kinetic sculpture, memory jugs and fake postage stamps among them.

​"The collage is inspired and informed through the isolation of the pandemic, they are a rather random assembly." www.michaelthompsonart.com

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