Kiki Smith
Getting the Bird Out, 1992
bronze and string 10x11-1/2x7"(25.4x29.2x17.8cm),
head1-1/2x6x1-1/2"(3.8x 15.2 x 3.8 cm), bird installation dimensions variable
Photograph by Sarah Harper Gifford, courtesy Pace Gallery
Getting the Bird Out
. . . to disimprison the soul of fact – Coleridge
1 Getting the Bird Out
You could hear it under the ribs
its flutterings wet and papery
Between her lips you could see it:
seedlings tipping their dicots toward the light
The shipping manifest the suede buttons
that last look over the shoulder: all that could be pulled out
Even the flywheel could be extracted
Without much damage delicacy itself would come free
But getting the bird proved difficult
For one thing the bird was a paraphrase
It clung like motion’s most intimate movement
to the principle of no-stone-unturned
Only when we gave up did it come out
It looked like no bird we’d ever seen
a gob of slag unheaped
On its side it lay the long red cord still deep in its throat
So many things its immobility seemed to say
were now going to be a thing of the past
2 On Broil
Onset with its per second per seconds
with its crude meticulous hustle
Onset exhilaration’s unsavory twin
that invades the definite article flip-book fast
Onset
whose mounted police line the demonstration route
Onset
that roaring tit that distress emancipator
who noisies up the lacerations
who strips of of its belongings
with its eastward-aiming
and westward-rumbling voracity
Onset and its magpie inroads
its sunset effusions
pouring out like the gospel of Job
lapsed and relapsing rolling out the patterns of pandemonium
with its brass knuckled and prowling epicenters
its mortar bandwagon </