Skeletal Phrases

The body through the external

Pelvis as bowl,

Ribcage along spine

Crown of shoulder girdle.

Portrait of Charles William Lambton (‘The Red Boy’) (1825) Sir Thomas Lawrence, detail

Rises above clavicle, into the neck.

Two columns, fine webbing.

Linen workwear dress

Absent left kidney,

Butterfly back of eye sockets,

Body, container,

Speak from the stomach.

A dream is a slow act

Spaces of memory and memories of body.

Celia Paul, Ghost of a Girl with an Egg, 2022

All Saints and St Andrew Church, Kingston

Liquid systems

Eyelashes scatter,

Thrown into physical space.

Nice putty, greenish-grey

Take parts of my eye and look after them (the red)

Artery Man, Vein Man

The ear and The air,

Any sounds, including memory.

Lace map in Bruges

Replicating thunder,

Compression

Expansion

Lumbar vertebrate of cow.

Radius rolled over ulna

Rowan Briggs Smith, Skeletal Phrases in storage

Foreheads pressing against wood

with my hand pressed to my breastbone.

Rowan Briggs Smith, anatomical dress, in progress

Falling down off ribcage,

Circular breathing

to fly in silence.