Wednesday, 8 May 2013

Portrait 2


                   draws up
               her mouthful
                             of long hair

     Hunched, she            
                              She leans out to

          You're there with stewed meat on blue spoon.

                    DINNER, she says.

    a thumbed table

              a bitten hand

           a chewed film


   crashed    wants     said     loud

         throat     graze


          black long
               long hair

           smile razors moderated world

                                     key scratches

    eyes kick in doors
               black hair and eyes

                 from where
   white zig zag lines
              shoot out from where
        her chair presences

subject ball
   between us goes
  to and fro

        She says, BALL.

           cackle splits and cracks

       a sideways


                 Fits


            The names she's given

     

7 comments:

  1. I think 'Dinner, she says' is a key point to this portrait. I'm trying to read it without this line and I see a different person.

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  2. Can it be that labeling this sympathetic portrait under "learning disabilities" increases the already staggering distance between reader and... what would the word be... "subject"?

    I get that the categorization is a (?necessary?) function of the "platform" technology. These are of course one-size-fits-all "normalizing" functions. But that's the rub. What the pigeonholing gives away can't be easily recovered.

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  3. Point taken, Tom. The label's gone. The work head had got the better of the human one.

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  4. Marie,

    For myself, I'm still trying to get some sense of who the woman in question is. I've not known her long and sometimes thing get fraught between us. When she says those plain statements, they do press home.

    Despite that prior use of the label, she's still in there, a particular person.

    I'll be putting the series on hold for now.

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  5. you understand that and you make us comprehend...

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  6. WB, what I forgot to say and should have said is that this is a great series. Looking forward to more of it!

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  7. Thank you, both, very much.

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