A long morphing, a fragment stilt, a vernacular of materialism.

And in her, she is a sever of a whole, the medium is grace. Film began as a chemistry bath, a glass honour library of forms. The medium of film begs light to lick up skin. A partial limb that could be stone, a stone record of a limb. We find ancient statues in the depths of the sea, is it a myth they survived centuries. Was she missing her arms from the start. We document our surprise, our belief in filmic gas, and endless longing to capture the strewn parts.

A history of sorrow falling in pieces, a history of magnification to unknow our own heart wringing. One torso design has outlasted its own stand on lasting. One torso design you may find on the floor of a marble cage, or heaving a love affair. A history of building molds to fit our own torso in protection. The tragedy we acknowledge of skin as a delicate vow, why we cultivate steel bastions to keep it on return.

Optics of stone emulate composition, nude is not a state to be noted. Was it an ancient jealousy that began garments as hiding. A muzzle of quiet on oppositional beauty. And the monuments we have made to our pelvis, a spine in everything. We have hidden it in metal, I can only conclude it was an imitation of our bones covered, the imaginary protection of a skeleton is an easy secret to forget. The length of a leg as an entity, one singular longing that could last ship-fulls, we could drink a single leg like beginner’s milk. In the archway of our arm is a stand out set of bones, the iron fire of how we crawl, how we rage, how we stay guzzled with saturation. The neck slinging swan ideas, a swan’s neck being an extra idea, an exposition of prowess as foundling.

The poetics of form haunt lines. We cannot escape a line. It is the definition, the boundary, the limit. We try mercilessly to blur it to a soft space of lack. A photograph is willing to take a chemical bath and get lost for you. Absent heavy thoughts can be suspended in a permanent form. It’s a valid translation of the original, we need not apologize for the disappearance. The gradient soaking paper would-be-skin is a willing companion in flat. Flat can be held, carried, categorized. There is an order in flat. We can take the mid lift of a nude form and keep it under our consideration, strictly.

A measured sameness in effort, the way we imagine her pulse as an object to be contained.

We pretend not to notice the likeness, the redundancy, the repetition of our mouthing. We could kiss with the same lip, but another is not the same, every lip meeting is its own revolution. Every arm slung with bone weight around the arm’s length of another is a different height. It may be a meshing, it may also be a destruction.

And here, we find her as a hedge maze of curved lines, a set of curves presented as painfully opaque, a certain love of her own line. For she whimpers in layers, she doesn’t make a decision in the space she collects. The exchange is eye to eye turned operatic foraging. The opening of one shutter to exalt her own shuddering. A set of feelings extracted with detail, a micro-caring.

Bound up with the idea of binding in mind. A sculpting of flesh turned prize. A document of stilted inclinations. The silence of her breath is still at work, the likeness to stone ends at the idea of lasting. We don’t last in our skin, our skeleton, or mouth altered seconds. We witness like it may not be ours, our limb hanging in a show. This is an exchange, this is a chemistry experiment, this is a mercilessly tense body etched in a vernacular of beauty we leave unknown, an unknown spine we take like a lead accomplice to sleep within.

STONE AMNESIA by Brit Parks

Amorphous longing, marble

is still standing, is there

a particular rebirth in stone

perhaps there is a secret 

unknown that almost 

demands an echo over words.

Chisel with it delicate

violence chipping at stone

breaking pulses, demonstrations

of an arm with a shoulder

telling your limbs 

it’s a stand in for 

a flesh tracing.

We can design our own rib

cage, we can un-crack it

a silent vow to mediums

celluloid began as a glass 

chemistry show. Chemicals 

meant to fuel a machine.

Glass meant to see-thru.

The body as form, as

parts strung up lamenting

their architecture.

A column, an arm

a spine, a closure of

this is the back of it all

legs, the way to run.