Exhibition

by Jennifer Higgie

 

nine heads and the difference in eyes

a poem for renee so from jennifer higgie

 

you don't have to have a title

five black

four white

almost not women and almost not men

perhaps king louis or marie antoinette or a girl called sam from

the war in England

 

perhaps they say thee

perhaps they say thou

perhaps they say merci

or grazie or grace

in a dead language

or one she can't speak

 

three of them need shoulders;

with short hair they looked like they might topple,

unweighted by a double profile

two faces of the same man

mediaeval or Greek armour or

something sometime inbetween

 

faces as masks that won't hide a thing

are useful

 

you can't control fire

she says, i don't know why it's shiny,

it's a different shade of black,

i have no control over the heat

i could not imagine it

 

like the military on fine wine, they

roll up to the carnival or from a western

she scratched into them when the clay was still wet

trying new ways to make faces

like they're friends or people

 

fast and bulbous hair

like time travellers

or workers or warriors or dandies

or girls who arrange their hair

while avoiding bombs

 

she was one when she migrated

but nothing is as simple as a journey

or as complicated as a border

nothing is that simple or simply one story

 

beautiful cracks are silent in these hollow skins

like veins like ancient skin

hair like buried eggs

the wind whistles

a flat cap, a scratched eye,

as pockmarked as youths

 

the hair is silent above

still cracked skulls

black and white and nothing less so

sausage eyebrows staring eyes hollow

but never vacant

one night we measured head

and it was surprising

who had the largest

 

the roughness compares with the smoothness of the beard

she says, i want him to look ruined but not dead

 

profiles like science fiction like

the idea of something ancient

we are so mobile now

time travellers every time we sleep

 

the double header

the large childlike ears

the way time mashes your mind

 

sometimes eyes are doubled like leaves

the black glaze cracks to reveal the whiteness beneath

creepy grinning cracks

a mouth like a bandage

she wants to see the process

wants the line to work like a mouth or a smile

 

only some heads have pupils

like scarification

or an initiation in a mute language

hair like bowls of fruit in

colours you couldn't eat

 

each one is different

like time travel

like cartoons

like eyelashes

 

to be a bit beaten and slightly damaged

to shine a little

with a bow tie

is very human

 

Jennifer Higgie is the co-editor of Frieze Magazine

www.frieze.com