Our Bodies as a Sight of Revelation: a Look at Stacy Boe Miller’s “I Saw a Picture of My Legs”

Stacy Boe Miller’s poem, “I Saw a Picture of My Legs” not only potentially uncorks women’s feelings about their legs, but begins with a self-asserting bang: “They were holding up a building.” A line that is casually bold and unapologetically confident. You see, I was once told as a kid that I had legs like “tree trunks,” and it didn’t make me feel like I could carry a building so much as it made me more of a long skirt and pants girl. 

Sharon Old’s has been teaching women to view our bodies as a sight of revelation for decades. In her 1980 poem, “The Language of The Brag” she writes, “I have wanted some epic use for my excellent body, / some heroism, some American achievement / beyond the ordinary for my extraordinary self.” It’s as if Miller read this poem and said, “With respect, Ms. Olds, please hold my beer,” and penned a poem that treats her legs with complete grandeur, stacking metaphors and self-mythologizing not what the 2-dimensional picture shows, but contains:

“Actually, they were saving 

a baby seal whose mother

had died and it was crying—and my legs

were saying ah, shhhh. 

And they were a priest, two 

priests, and the faithful were waiting 

in line with open mouths

for my legs to extend

a holy wafer. My legs

were one-thousand-year

comets. They were 

archangels…”

I love the cinematic nature of Miller’s descriptions, this is a poem centered around a picture after all, but there is something so charming in the way the speaker muses aloud, even self-correcting her metaphors along the way because she’s determined, but aware she is still not quite getting it right. It’s not so much a self-doubt in toeing this line between mythic seriousness and playful surrealism, it’s a winking intelligence that flows seamlessly with images that are vivid and varied. The speaker’s legs are foundational, protective, nurturing, celestial, divine, and even holy.  

Perhaps what intrigued me most about Miller’s poem is her trust in the reader’s assumptions to fill the space in what we aren’t told. We don’t know the context of this picture the speaker is referencing. It could be a childhood photo, a post-workout pic, a snapshot in stilettos, it doesn’t matter. It might not even be a literal picture at all, but an imagined vision of one’s own power and confidence. The intention is to flip the dynamic from boring human sexual gaze to something far more complex and elusive about the human body. These legs aren’t just limbs, they have their own consciousness, they have empathy, they are heroes.

There is a playfulness to be admired in this poem. Miller knows exactly what she is doing with line breaks and suggestive language. The choice to break the line of “for my legs to extend” with “a holy wafer” creates such a loaded pause, shifting the expectation from physical and sexual to something more spiritual and profound. 

“I Saw a Picture of my Legs” reminds us that our bodies not only contain multitudes, but we can be self-indulgent with our self-awareness, and I just might go put on a pair of shorts!