Allison Benis White's Small Porcelain Head (Four Way Books, 2013)

Here are some favourite passages from this powerful, enigmatic book in prose poetry:

Please forgive me. I pray and can't make it stop. There were lambswool wigs and paperweight eyes, two factory fires. Instead of blankness, I learned to draw stars with two triangles, one upside and overlapping the other. I covered pages, then like bracelets, my wrists.

*

What should I do with my mind? Think of the way it broke until the breaking is language.

*

Unlike the other automatons who lift a hand mirror or balloon, she exists even when we close our eyes, slapping one small brass cymbal into another, frantically, to prove touching.

*

When I have a headache, I lift my hand over my eyes--if death is a failure of imagination, we are alive.

*

The mutual helplessness of seeing and being seen.

*

As with every revelation, midair, oblivion is realigned and clarified: I want to die then decide.

*

What makes the object alive is desire without relief.

*

Within the bonnet, the two-faced head is rotated by pulling a string from the torso: one face calm, one crying plastic beads on her cheeks--turning: peaceful, sad, peaceful.

Nothing in-between, no transition--I don't remember why she is suffering, why she is glad. It happens so fast: I am hopeless as I pull the string in her torso, then sick with wonder.

*

After a while, we moan and lift our arms in order to feel what she feels: her pose is agony.

In the UK, Small Porcelain Head is available from Wordery.