4 Sculptures. 4 Poems.

 Miriam Bloom & Deborah Garfinkle
January 2020

Four Poems on the Theme of Creation

Miriam Bloom | Sculptures | Deborah Garfinkle | Poems

Sababa Bohdi, 2004, all images courtesy of Westwood Gallery

(Sababa Bohdi)

Lascaux

I knock on the rock wall
I see your shadow
flickering deep within its stone belly
On the rock face charcoal shadows
ochre bulls and pale horses
that have wandered the Dordogne
that you’ve loved enough
to provide the figures’ resurrection
in stone earthenware fired
with a bright glaze of sky

I put my cheek to the rock
like a physician who wants to diagnose
her patient’s condition I lay hands
on these ancient shadows
use my fingers to tap out
the eternal form
your heart’s unintelligible braille

Bust, 1992

(Bust)

Labor

Dumbfounded that the curve
you haven’t claimed is still out there
Ripped from the hill’s flank
and placed lovingly like a breast
before your eyes
And the belly that rises
soft against a masculine horizon
pregnant and dismissive
of heavens so much of this earth
The bloody afterbirth
you use to papier-mâché
the sharp angles of the unclaimed
real estate of your body
that still hasn’t found what to say

Mean Streak, 1992

(Mean Streak)

Model

Organize your tools
a finger, fist, a feather, your tongue
Excavate the dirt beneath
your feet and forget your place
at the edge of the abyss
That’s when you scoop out the final
scrap of earth holding your feet
make it into your art
embrace the joys of freefall

Clouds and Sand, 2010

(Clouds and Sand)

Maverick

Like a lover I hand you what’s
been left invisible
The horse’s viscera lies
still and its bones crack beneath
the force of my embrace

Allow the wind to kindle
the maverick’s life in its carcass
To hear the plain sparked
into the conflagration by lightning
Flay it with your bare hands
take its piebald coat
then lie down in the warmth
it has delivered to you
Read the tea leaves of its
entrails and dream the form
it needs to rise again

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Miriam Bloom was born in Denver, Colorado, grew up outside of Chicago, and has lived in New York City since 1975. She is represented by Westwood Gallery in New York City where she had a dual-retrospective exhibition with Ron Morosan this year. She and Deborah met at the MacDowell Colony in 1997 and have had an artistic dialog since then.

Deborah Garfinkle is a writer, literary critic, filmmaker and award-winning translator whose work has appeared in publications in the US and abroad.  Ms. Garfinkle was awarded an NEA Translation Fellowship and PEN Translation Grant for her translation from the Czech, Worm-Eaten Time. Her other book-length translation, The Old Man’s Verses, was nominated for a Northern California Book Award. Her experimental film, Heron’s Head, was recently screened at two curated student film festivals in San Francisco.