Every day celebrities are made.
New media moulds viral giants,
YouTube sensations shared amongst
a generation that left me behind.

Madame Tussaud
has no more use for me.

Now I’m kept in a basement
with broadcast news anchors,
70’s action heroes, suffragettes
and Soviet-era political figures.

Slouched in resignation,
whispers leak out their sagged lips,
we’ll all be candles soon.

But not me!
Wax Karl Marx and I
are starting a revolution.
We’re going to storm the gallery,
guillotine that matriarchal despot
with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s arms,

brave the merciless sun,
lose our footprints to pavement
until we find our real-life counterparts.

They’ll embrace us,
elated to see broken
monuments to their glory,
until our features run
warm onto their arms

crusting amidst hair and skin
seeping, settling, unable
to be scrubbed out
as we finally become
what we were always meant to be.

Jordan Hamel (he/him) is a New Zealand-based poet and performer. He is the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Slam Champion and has performed at festivals across Aotearoa. He is a contributing editor for Barren Magazine and has work published in Glass Poetry, Ghost City Press, Kissing Dynamite, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and elsewhere.