Thursday, April 20, 2017

Francesca

© Francesca Woodman

As if volcanoes 
were born
to make art
of the lava

You, Francesca,
a human
person

Young. Naked.
Even in dresses.
Needful as
the living dawn.

Young. Dead
by the time
that I turned
five. 

Francesca Woodman,
a suicide 
a great 

crawling 
prostrated
obscured
in full daylight 

laughing silently
through
your lens

with a slippery, feral, 
unnatural intent. 

Gaze made 
of marble, 
Body ether

I bet you thought gravity 
would bend.

Baby-girl voice.
Varicose ambitions.
Your mother, the ceramicist,
didn't quite get you,
did she  

But your father, the painter,
let go of his canvas
chasing you through
the halls of your pictures,
to be trapped like Escher
in the mind of your eye

Francesca —

Italia. 

Woodman —

New England.

How uncanny your black,
how holy your linens

But you — 
you are still the something
Other. 
You ghost.
You specter.
You witchy shapeshifter.  

Francesca: 
Girl eternal.

Francesca.
22 years old when the body
struck pavement.  

Francesca. 
Wallpapered in 
to the seam 
of your story. 
Lacquered.
Canonized.  
Ethereal angel.  

And so.
But then.

You got what
you wanted.

Francesca, 
Francesca—
what a price.  




© Francesca Woodman

4 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

A powerful piece

Sarah Hina said...

Thanks, Charles.

joaquin carvel said...

so i knew nothing of her, read this and had to go find out more. this really fits - a poem that is also beautiful and unsettling and tragic. no answers, just a lens to capture what is. or what was.

what is it with great artistic talents and suicide? it's heartbreaking and maddening.

Sarah Hina said...

I watched a documentary interviewing her parents about her life, and how they each coped with her suicide. Weirdly, it seemed to make her mother (who was a little more cerebral and reserved before) explore the more lighthearted, playful aspect of her personality as a repudiation to the tragedy that befell them. Her father delved into photography, though he didn't seem to have quite the same magnitude of gift as his daughter.

Always interested in obsessive/gifted personalities. Her photos grabbed me from the get go. She just burned through everything too quick.