Incommunicado, Tate Modern
I find the tiny steel structure after the third miscarriage.
Tucked in the corner. It calls out to me.
Heavily lit and engulfed by white space, it lies remote and
confused, craves something it doesn’t understand.
It’s meant to symbolize some sort of prison, says David.
What do you want? I whisper to the sculpture
as I run my fingers across its mesh.
I would put my baby in you.
Katherine Lockton‘s poetry has been published in a variety of magazines such as Magma, and Rising and is forthcoming in The Morning Star and The Delinquent.
This poem has extraordinary emotional power,right from the first
line with the ‘tiny’ steel structure. Even the art work itself is ‘tucked in’ like a child in bed, and is ‘engulfed’,’remote’,’confused’, as a lost child would be.
Each reading yields more layers of sorrow, grief and perhaps guilt at the end.
A great example of what can happen when the work of another artist ‘calls out’ to a poet. Thank you.
Stark, sad beauty.
Is it the Mona Hartoum piece you’re referring to?