Eating the archive
Single-page drawing
Transubstantiation
Her book
after Kiki Smith
From inside all this hair I can see you.
The body on the ground,
on its own, is resurrection. Female,
that’s a question of creation.
Some days hair is miles of messages
meant for pre-Morse receivers,
bare scratching of another’s hand
on vellum that looks like skin.
The body inside the hair room is
speaking like most other bodies;
its speech packs around it like wasp
paper. Speaking a thin, permanent
archive. What we call a woman.
Carrier (standing woman carrying wolf)
after Kiki Smith
She was preaching no sermon except
the one that goes love thyself, sinner, and love
them animals, the ones running past you
in the night when you can hardly breathe
their fur gets so close and all you want to do
is pass out so you don’t remember how good
they smell and if you want to be one.
after Kiki Smith
From up here I can see it all.
Collision of the cellular level and the structures.
I raised this body myself.
I have been pouring water from my hands.
Listen, the body
is more like stars than we know; I’ve seen them
rising from my sternum, a private 3-D
panoramic constellation.
With my long spine I look down over everything.
With my bare head and my secondary stars.
after Kiki Smith
One of us had to do it,
no question.
To go and live inside the wolf
and walk out one day, rip
its soft abdomen
open and leave
the carcass there like a casting.
Truth is,
we fought this—
we wore one another under
our nails for weeks.
We know what it’s like
to stay where things are mostly
made of blood.
We know the soft
wet feeling walking in.
We know
where to slice to get away.
after Kiki Smith
No one thought
to equip us for being
here. So we’ve been busy
making us things.
The camera’s
a third eye
made of leather,
wood, oil paint,
one nail.
What’s not to love about this
kind of looking?
Our homemade camera
sees with the densest eye
even
when we don’t open its case.
after Kiki Smith
Girl with part in her hair.
Girl with downward glance.
Girl with tiny Adam’s apple.
Girl with shoulders gently.
Girl with generalized flower pattern.
Girl with stomacher.
Girl with late 18th century.
Girl with exposed.
Girl with blue ground.
Girl with fog.
Girl with platemark.
Girl with fourteen doubles.
Girl with Hahnemühle.
Girl
