Here are some favourite passages from this powerful, enigmatic book in prose poetry:
In the UK, Small Porcelain Head is available from Wordery.
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.
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What should I do with my mind? Think of the way it broke until the breaking is language.
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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.
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When I have a headache, I lift my hand over my eyes--if death is a failure of imagination, we are alive.
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The mutual helplessness of seeing and being seen.
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As with every revelation, midair, oblivion is realigned and clarified: I want to die then decide.
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What makes the object alive is desire without relief.
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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.
