The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Kathleen Kirk's "Interior Sculpture"

Broken Figure

Destruction and creation come from the same
place, I think, but I no longer hope
to see again my home or those I loved.
I take my hammer and crush a figure—plaster
or dream, remembered or real. Equally dust.

There is pity in this. I can’t stand
the screams of all these creatures anymore.
They break my heart. I am a woman crouching
in a corner. I am the torso of a woman crouching.

This selection comes from Kathleen Kirk’s book Interior Sculpture, available from Dancing Girl Press. Purchase your copy here!

Kathleen Kirk is the author of five poetry chapbooks, most recently Interior Sculpture: poems in the voice of Camille Claudel (Dancing Girl Press, 2014) and Nocturnes (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2012), with a sixth, The ABCs of Women’s Work, forthcoming from Red Bird in 2015. Her work appears in many journals, including Arsenic Lobster, Poetry East, Redheaded Stepchild, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. She is the poetry editor for Escape Into Life. The poems featured here were commissioned by Columbus Dance Theatre for the world premier of Claudel, a dance, theatre, and music collaboration. Kathleen blogs at her accidental blog, Wait! I Have a Blog?! http://kathleenkirkpoetry.blogspot.com/

Donna Vorreyer is the author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications, 2013) as well as six chapbooks, most recently Encantado, a collaboration with artist Matt Kish from Redbird Chapbooks forthcoming in April. She is an assistant poetry editor for Extract(s), and her second collection is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2016.