So, here is the whole shebang. I know I was banging on about the greater glory of the square yesterday, but one of my concerns with the squares is how they speak to each other when lined up like so. Like a poem moving from stanza to stanza, or room to room.  There is something here about tension – the limbs straining to touch each other, the ear forced to listen, the torso hung up to dry like washing.  I quoted some Vasko Popa the other day, and I think this entire sequence has been influenced heavily by his ‘Games’.

It seems appropriate here to paste in a poem from The Breakfast Machine which I feel comes from the same place as these images.

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Dolls

This one’s child has emptied her tears
into its heart and turned it to salt.
Poor salt doll,
there’s no end to her sorrows.

*
There’s always someone to do your dirty work,
always someone
with plucked-out eye,
with snapped-off hands.

*
A froufrou legion
with wide-awake eyes
in the junkshop window,
they have all lost their names.

*
Made of wax
they will inherit the earth
if that’s what you want –
there’s all manner of spells.

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I am waiting for a box of doll parts to arrive from an ebay seller, and in the meantime have been forced into creating a lunar landscape with cow and fresh water pearls.  If it works I will put it up here.  If it doesn’t, let us speak no more of it…